During the 2008 elections social media was just barley hitting main stream. Four years later no politician, especially a presidential one, would ever think about running a campaign without harnessing the power of the masses. I also guarantee that as social media grew so did the amount of PR staff needed to a political candidate. One tweet with critical information can go viral and spread something good or bad much sooner than a television network or website could report it.

Its interesting to see how quickly political campaigns can react to something especially if its bad. Take a look at when the Mitt Romney 47 percent video leaked. The word about it along with the video spread so quickly that Romney’s crisis management team was barley getting ready to deal with it when it had already reached virility. Crisis management is going to have to go through some changes to keep up with the pace that social media can spread something, and it will be interesting to see what gets learned from this political season.