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Here’s something we haven’t seen done with Facebook Timeline before: political opposition research.

Newt Gingrich launched a new Timeline page called the “Romney Record” Wednesday morning, fresh off the heels of Super Tuesday. The idea? To use Timeline’s chronological layout to highlight Mitt Romney’s decisions that some conservative voters may find off-putting.

Many conservatives, Gingrich included, have accused Romney of failing to be “conservative enough” to win the support of Republican voters. Facebook Timeline has given the Gingrich campaign a unique way to make that argument in an easy-to-consume digital format.

The page’s cover photo labels Romney an “out-of-touch liberal.” The “about” section highlights a Romney quote about not wanting a return to the years of President Reagan, who is idolized by many conservative voters.

The Romney Record Timeline specifically calls attention to Romney quotes that make him appear a too-liberal moderate Republican whose wealth prevents him from understanding the lives of average Americans.

Posts about recent Romney gaffes include a quote about his being “unemployed,” as he left the Massachusetts governorship in 2007. Romney intended the line to connect with Americans unable to find work in a tough economy, but many found it insincere because Romney enjoys considerable personal wealth.

As a visitor to the Romney Record scrolls down the page and backwards through time, he or she is presented with news clips and video of Romney speeches, quotes and decisions from his time as governor of Massachusetts that have proved controversial with some Republican voters.

Scrolling further down the page reveals stories about Romney’s life before politics as President and CEO of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games and CEO of Bain Capital, a private investment firm. Prominently highlighted is a now-famous picture of a young Romney and his Bain associates proudly displaying money.

A longer trip down the Timeline shows visitors Romney taking moderate stands on issues like abortion rights and health care during his 1994 Senate race against the late Ted Kennedy.

However, some parts of the Timeline are mislabeled. For example, that 1994 senatorial debate between Romney and Ted Kennedy is called a “gubernatorial debate” in the description.

What do you think of the Romney Record Timeline page? Do you think more of these negative political Timelines will show up in the coming months? Sound off in the comments below.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, Gage Skidmore

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Today is Super Tuesday in the U.S., the day when the most delegates are up for grabs in a single 24-hour period during the entirety of the Republican presidential primary. Naturally, social media is abuzz with Super Tuesday tweets, pictures and video.

Not only are primary-goers are tweeting and posting to Facebook about their support for a particular candidate, those candidates are trying to get more support via social networks. Additionally, journalists are covering Super Tuesday with social media and arm-chair pollsters are using trends on Twitter, Facebook and other networks to help predict the various races.

Will Mitt Romney take most of the states and finally be cemented as the frontrunner? Will he and Rick Santorum split the lion’s share of delegates, prolonging a two-man race for the Republican nomination? And how will all these candidates use social media and the web to win Super Tuesday states?

Follow along with Mashable as we collect the best tweets, pictures and videos from Super Tuesday. This will be updated as the day continues. And tell us your predictions in the comments below!

Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, pagadesign

More About: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, newt gingrich, Politics, Rick Santorum, ron paul, super tuesday, trending

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Today is Super Tuesday, the day when the most delegates are up for grabs in a single 24-hour period throughout the race to become the Republican presidential nominee. For weeks, Americans have been talking about the candidates on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks.

So which candidates are seeing the most online buzz leading up to Tuesday’s primaries and caucuses?

Check out Google’s graphic on the most-searched for candidate in each Super Tuesday state. Google also included the top searched-for issues in each state relevant to the elections:

Social media analysis company Socialmatica has been tracking Super Tuesday social buzz for the past few weeks. According to its analysis, Mitt Romney has the most social influence in each Super Tuesday state except Georgia.

That exception makes sense, because son-of-the-south Newt Gingrich served as a congressman for the suburbs of Atlanta for 20 years. Socialmatica’s tracker works by crawling the web and sorting data based on context, which “distills the noise,” according to Joshua Barnes, director of social and technology at Socialmatica.

A different social media analysis company, Socialbakers, found that Romney is enjoying the most interaction on his Facebook page out of the four remaining Republican candidates. Socialbakers also found that Rick Santorum got a spike of Facebook attention leading up to and after his three wins in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado.

For more analysis, check out Socialbakers’s infographic below:

Watch for more Super Tuesday coverage from Mashable throughout the day.

Who do you think will win the most Super Tuesday states? Sound off in the comments below.

Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, JamesBrey

More About: 2012 presidential campaign, Facebook, Mitt Romney, newt gingrich, Rick Santorum, ron paul, Social Media, Twitter

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Newt Gingrich, ex-Speaker of the House and Republican presidential hopeful, has turned on Facebook‘s new profile option, Timeline.

Maybe he was inspired by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who did the same last week? Not exactly. According to Vincent Harris, who runs Gingrich’s new media efforts, the team switched to Timeline because it allows the campaign to showcase Gingrich’s “long record of fighting for conservative values” as well as the candidate’s personal side.

On Gingrich’s Timeline, his cover photo shows the candidate wide-grinned, signing autographs beside his wife Callista. His occupation is “Founder at Center for Health Transformation,” Gingrich’s healthcare organization. His education is in “European History at Tulane University,” and he lives in McLean, Virginia.

Facebook Timeline’s “Life Event” feature lets users highlight significant achievements in their lives. It’s also a natural fit to show off a politician’s accomplishments. On Gingrich’s page, recent endorsements, such as Herman Cain and Chuck Norris, stand out with pictures of endorsers and links to relevant news articles.

Timeline, which is meant to be viewed as a biography, is well suited to a politician with a public service record as long as Gingrich has.

In that vein, Gingrich uses “Life Event” markers to highlight accomplishments that are part of his presidential campaign’s message. In 1972, there’s a marker for Gingrich’s role as 6th district chairman for President Nixon’s election. His Timeline also highlights achievements or positions that may appeal to current voters: “early supporter of tax rate reductions” in 1978, “praised Reagan’s leadership” in 1984, “testified against Cap and Trade” in 2009, and so on.

Facebook Timeline does, however, have a way of boiling flavor out of events that once lit political fireworks: Gingrich’s stepping down from his post as Speaker came after pressure from other Republicans, but Timeline reduces that to “1999: Ended Work at United States House of Representatives.” Also, only one of Gingrich’s marriages is listed, but it’s unclear if this is a limitation on Facebook’s part or an omission by Gingrich’s team.

Facebook has a team headquartered in Washington, D.C. which helps politicians use the social network to organize. Harris said the Facebook political team helped with branding, and that they “are incredibly on the ball and serve as a good resource for campaigns,” said Harris.

Gingrich has also turned on Facebook Subscribe, a feature which lets Facebook users share certain updates with the general public while keeping other messages private. As of 4:15 p.m. ET Monday, he had just over 1,000 subscribers.

SEE ALSO: Facebook Timeline Roll Out: Everything You Need to Know

What are Harris’ plans for Gingrich’s Facebook presence? Even with this new Timeline page up, his old “public figure” page is still running.

“The fantastic visual nature of Timeline will allow Speaker Gingrich’s campaign to showcase important events, endorsements, and victories,” said Harris. “We plan on utilizing both the page and Timeline in a parallel nature, at least until pages potentially update to Timeline.”

Will the other candidates follow suit and jump on Timeline? What do you think of Gingrich’s Timeline? Sound off in the comments below.

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BONUS: How To Fill In Your Facebook Timeline

1. The Timeline Menu Bar

As you scroll down your new Timeline, a floating menu bar will appear at the top of your screen. Use it to add new events.

Click here to view this gallery.

Images courtesy of Flickr, Gage Skidmore

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Can Twitter predict the outcome of the Iowa Caucus better than national polls? Mashable has partnered with Global Point Research to answer that question.

According to the latest NBC News-Marist national poll, ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has a slight edge over Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s recent surge has subsided, but he remains in third. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s campaign is getting hot right before the caucus.

On Twitter, a similar pattern is unfolding. However, Santorum’s sudden boost in the polls is much more pronounced on the microblogging service. Rick Perry also has a better showing online than in the NBC poll.

The graph below compares the NBC poll with positive sentiment on Twitter. The data was collected between Dec. 27 and Dec. 30.

In research Global Point has done in the past, its data tends to be about two weeks ahead of polls. This doesn’t necessarily mean Santorum is about to run away with a blowout win in Iowa. What it does signal is that the former senator is experiencing a dramatic upswing in positive sentiment online just before the caucus.

Do these results mean we’ll see a better-than-expected showing for Santorum and Perry Tuesday? We’ll be watching the results very closely to find out.

More About: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, newt gingrich, rick perry, Rick Santorum, ron paul, Twitter

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Former House Speaker and GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was correct in his explanation for why he has relatively few active accounts among his 1.3 million Twitter followers, an analysis requested by Mashable has revealed.

Earlier this month, Gawker published allegations from an anonymous former Gingrich staffer, who said the candidate had bought most of his Twitter followers. (Thousands of dummy Twitter accounts are available for sale on eBay for anyone who wants to boost his or her follower count.) One analysis of Gingrich’s account suggested that a mere 8% of his followers were real.

Gingrich’s explanation for the mass of inactive accounts was that they followed him while he was on Twitter’s Suggested User List. The SUL was a list of more than 200 accounts users might want to follow; Twitter promoted it in 2009 and 2010. There were 10 politicians on the list, including Al Gore, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jordan’s Queen Rania and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

If Gingrich was correct, all of the politicians on the SUL would have roughly the same composition of followers. So we asked Topsy, a social media search company, to conduct an exhaustive, weeks-long analysis of the followers of every politician on the SUL.

The result: No matter which way you slice it, nearly all political accounts on the SUL have the same levels of inactivity among their followers as Gingrich.

For example, 76% of Gingrich’s followers have posted no information about themselves in the bio section of their profile. But the same is true for 68% of Rania’s followers, 74% of both Booker and McCain’s followers, 78% of California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s followers and 79% of California Gov. Jerry Brown‘s followers.

“The followers of SUL politicians are not very active on Twitter,” says Rishab Ghosh, co-founder of Topsy. “Between 74% and 90% of their followers haven’t tweeted in the past month, and 30% to 41% have never tweeted at all.”

So which SUL politician has the most inactive followers? Step forward Mufi Hannemann, former mayor of Honolulu. Of Hannemann’s followers, 82% have no bio, 59% have Twitter’s default profile image (versus 52% for Gingrich), and only 7% have posted in the past month (versus 14% for Gingrich).

Ironically, the two political accounts on the SUL that are not actual people — @whitehouse and @downingstreet — have far more active, human-like followers than any of the above accounts. Downing Street, the home of the British prime minister, comes off particularly well: Just 28% of its followers have no bios, 8% have the default profile image, and nearly half of them have posted in the last month.

So there is no smoking gun to suggest that Gingrich, or any of these politicians, bought any of their followers. But what this kind of analysis also reveals, says Topsy, is how hard it is to say which Twitter accounts are for real and which aren’t. Spam bots are getting more sophisticated; many now have fake profile pictures, fake bios and generate fake tweets. “The fact is, a large proportion of all Twitter accounts are inactive anyway,” says Ghosh.

Sorting the humans from the fakes is a problem that companies like Topsy — and Twitter itself, which now has more than 200 million accounts — will be wrestling with for years to come.

Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore, Flickr

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The big news this week was the U.S. Congress passing a bill to raise the debt ceiling, thereby saving the U.S. from defaulting on its outstanding debt and potentially causing a second recession.

Here, we’ll take a look at what role social played in avoiding financial ruin, as well as allegations that presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich bought his Twitter following and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s take on U.S. history. This is the Week in Politics & Digital.

Debt Bill Passes, Some Blood on the Floor

On August 2, President Obama signed a bill to raise the debt ceiling — just hours ahead of the deadline. The country breathed a sigh of relief, but the bill didn’t come without some headaches. Days earlier, Obama and his staff asked people to tweet using the hashtag #compromise and preceeded to post Twitter info of GOP lawmakers in every state.

The feedback was largely negative with followers claiming the president was spamming their accounts. In total, @BarackObama lost more than 36,000 followers.

Still, despite the criticism, a White House aide claims that the Twitter campaign helped get the debt bill passed.

Did Gingrich Buy Bots to Follow Him on Twitter?

Newt Gingrich may not be a front runner for the Republican presidential nomination, but at least he has all those Twitter followers, right?

With 1.3 million followers, Gingrich has more than any other Republican candidate. But a former staffer claims Gingrich paid “follow” agencies to create fake Twitter accounts that follow him. The anonymous staffer told Gawker that 80% of Gingrich’s followers are fake; a quick scan revealed many accounts that have never tweeted or have no profile picture and bio info.

A follow up by PeekYou revealed that only 8% of Gingrich’s followers are actually human.

This of course doesn’t prove Gingrich paid a firm and it still leaves him with an enviable 100,000 real followers.

Learn History From Mike Huckabee

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has co-founded Learn Our History, a site aimed at teaching important events in American history to a young demographic. One lesson, for example, provides a digital re-enactment of 9/11 and the War on Terror.

The videos cost $10 each and are meant to correct “our children’s classes and learning materials [that] are often filled with misrepresentations, including historical inaccuracies, personal biases and political correctness.”

What do you think of this week’s big stories in digital and politics? Sound off in the comments.

More About: #compromise, barack obama, debt, Debt Ceiling, debt ceiling bill, education, mike huckabee, newt gingrich, politics, week in digital politics

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The big news this week was the U.S. Congress passing a bill to raise the debt ceiling, thereby saving the U.S. from defaulting on its outstanding debt and potentially causing a second recession.

Here, we’ll take a look at what role social played in avoiding financial ruin, as well as allegations that presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich bought his Twitter following and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s take on U.S. history. This is the Week in Politics & Digital.

Debt Bill Passes, Some Blood on the Floor

On August 2, President Obama signed a bill to raise the debt ceiling — just hours ahead of the deadline. The country breathed a sigh of relief, but the bill didn’t come without some headaches. Days earlier, Obama and his staff asked people to tweet using the hashtag #compromise and preceeded to post Twitter info of GOP lawmakers in every state.

The feedback was largely negative with followers claiming the president was spamming their accounts. In total, @BarackObama lost more than 36,000 followers.

Still, despite the criticism, a White House aide claims that the Twitter campaign helped get the debt bill passed.

Did Gingrich Buy Bots to Follow Him on Twitter?

Newt Gingrich may not be a front runner for the Republican presidential nomination, but at least he has all those Twitter followers, right?

With 1.3 million followers, Gingrich has more than any other Republican candidate. But a former staffer claims Gingrich paid “follow” agencies to create fake Twitter accounts that follow him. The anonymous staffer told Gawker that 80% of Gingrich’s followers are fake; a quick scan revealed many accounts that have never tweeted or have no profile picture and bio info.

A follow up by PeekYou revealed that only 8% of Gingrich’s followers are actually human.

This of course doesn’t prove Gingrich paid a firm and it still leaves him with an enviable 100,000 real followers.

Learn History From Mike Huckabee

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has co-founded Learn Our History, a site aimed at teaching important events in American history to a young demographic. One lesson, for example, provides a digital re-enactment of 9/11 and the War on Terror.

The videos cost $10 each and are meant to correct “our children’s classes and learning materials [that] are often filled with misrepresentations, including historical inaccuracies, personal biases and political correctness.”

What do you think of this week’s big stories in digital and politics? Sound off in the comments.

More About: #compromise, barack obama, debt, Debt Ceiling, debt ceiling bill, education, mike huckabee, newt gingrich, politics, week in digital politics

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When New York search company PeekYou happened to start crunching the numbers on GOP candidates’ Twitter followers last month, they encountered a number so odd that they thought they must have done the math wrong.

The startup uses an algorithm to determine how many of your followers are consumers, i.e. actual identifiable human beings, as opposed to spam accounts, business accounts and private accounts. (The company is so maniacal about making sure it has correctly identified spambots, it bought access to thousands of them on eBay.)

When it came to the GOP field, what stood out was the percentage of verifiable humans that follow Newt Gingrich: just 8% of the total.

“At first, we actually thought it might have been a bug,” says Michael Hussey, PeekYou’s CEO and founder. “We have seen some pretty low consumer ratios in our testing, but Newt’s was the lowest we had ever seen.”

Then on Monday, an anonymous ex-Gingrich campaign staffer told Gawker that his former boss had been paying for Twitter followers. As dubious as the sourcing was, it made perfect sense to Hussey and his team. Perhaps, they thought, this wasn’t a bug on their side after all.

The Gingrich campaign’s response to the Gawker story was to point out that Gingrich’s account had been on the Suggested Users List. This was put together by Twitter between 2009 and 2010, when the service was growing exponentially. Accounts on the list — including @Mashable — did gain a large number of followers.

Hussey does have some comfort for Gingrich on that score. “It’s true that people who were on that list do tend to have less identifiable audiences,” he says. “But 8% is still unusually low” — the lowest he’s ever seen by five percentage points.

We’ve asked PeekYou to crunch the numbers for other politicians who were on the Suggested Users List, such as California’s former governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and its current Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom (who has almost exactly the same number of followers as Newt). In the meantime, here’s the list of GOP candidates they compiled.

Note that even if you reduce Gingrich’s Twitter followers to its 106,067 verifiable humans, he’s still in a very strong position compared to his rivals. Only Sarah Palin has more.

Photo credit: Flickr user Gage Skidmore

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GOP candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has had one consolation during his faltering Presidential campaign: the size of his Twitter following.

His account, @Newtgingrich, is currently followed by more than 1.3 million users — a very impressive number, especially compared to GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, who has yet to reach 63,000 followers.

But now there’s more trouble for Newt, as one of his former staffers is alleging that the candidate paid various “follow agencies” to create fake accounts that follow him. “Newt employs a variety of agencies whose sole purpose is to procure Twitter followers for people who are shallow/insecure/unpopular enough to pay for them,” the anonymous staffer told Gawker. “If you simply scroll through his list of followers you’ll see that most of them have odd usernames and no profile photos, which has to do with the fact that they were mass generated.”

The staffer alleges that 80% of Newt’s followers — more than a million accounts, in other words — fall under the heading of fake.

You can test out the theory yourself by looking at Newt’s followers here. At time of writing, for example, three of the first six followers are accounts that have never tweeted, have no profile photo or biographical information, and have a very small number of followers themselves. The picture looks a little better for Newt when you examine the first 100 of his followers listed by Twitter: just 25% meet those criteria, a far cry from 80%. (That said, we have our doubts about plenty of accounts that meet just two of those criteria, such as “Angus Jack McFaux”.)

We look forward to a more thorough analysis from anyone with the time to scan all of Newt’s 1.3 million Twitter followers.

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