By Cara Maresca
The general consensus: Ann Romney hit it out of the park with her let's-talk-about-love approach in Tampa last night.
Meanwhile, Governor Chris Christie's plan of attack -- the juiced-up-Jersey, "respect-over-love" method -- has been met with some criticism.
Though the two back-to-back speeches at the last night's Republican National Convention couldn't have differed more in style, there's one goal they must've agreed to backstage: "Let's give 'em something to Tweet about."
Tweets related to #GOP2012 reached the highest rate of the night -- 6,195 Tweets per minute -- at the end of Ann Romney's speech when Mitt joined her on stage. But Gov. Christie's speech "inspired the second highest spike in conversation for the night (6,079 Tweets per minute), at the point of his line about a 'second American century,'" Twitter's Adam Sharp said. Just a 1.9% drop in #GOP2012 mentions between Ann Romney and Chris Christie's spotlight speeches? Sounds like we've got ourselves a Tweet-off.
Immediately after his keynote speech, Gov. Christie resumed tweeting from his new Twitter handle he created specifically for use during the RNC: @ChristieKeynote. Further proving his social media savvy, Christie's new account even features its very own Tumblr page, complete with photos of last night's graffiti-inspired backdrop.
Ann Romney is fairly new to the world of social media -- her @AnnDRomney handle was just created in April -- but that didn't seem to matter last night. Twitter responded very positively to Mrs. Romney: "Her Twitter Political Index score nearly doubled over the course of her speech, from 45 to 83 -- the biggest increase for any of the night’s speakers," Sharp said. Even Mitt Romney saw his Twitter Political Index score increase by two points since yesterday (he is currently beating out President Obama 42 to 29 on that scale). The Twitter Political Index does not include a ranking for Gov. Chris Christie.
Though Ann Romney may have won over the Twitterverse, that's only some 15 percent of online adults. What remains to be seen: whether those voters -- particularly women -- will flock to the voting booths for her husband come November.
Mitt Romney, for one, doesn't seem worried about Ann's performance. He posted this picture on Instagram today, with caption: "She wowed everyone. I'm not surprised one bit."