Conservative group used tweet strategy against Coakley - The Boston Globe

A timely campaigning reality check

The American Future Fund apparently set up nine accounts that sent 929 tweets over the course of about two hours — a method the study calls “Twitter-bomb.’’

Those messages would have reached about 60,000 people before Twitter realized it was spam and shut it down, according to the authors.

“It was a very cheap way of reaching about 60,000 people with limited resources and a limited amount of time,’’ Metaxas, associate professor of computer science at Wellesley College, said yesterday in an interview. “We’re going to see a lot more in the next election. I believe everybody will aggressively do everything they can with the social network.’’

Conservative group used tweet strategy against Coakley - The Boston Globe