President's Twitter campaign back-tweets

It's hard to explain it in 140 characters or less. President Obama's re-election Twitter account lost thousands of followers Friday after his 2012 campaign tried to use the social media site to turn up the heat on Republicans over the debt ceiling.

The account, @BarackObama, sent out scores of tweets Friday listing the Twitter handles for dozens of GOP members of Congress.

"If you live in Wisconsin, ask @SenRonJohnson http://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson to support bipartisan compromise to the debt crisis," one tweet said.

Earlier in the day, the president called on Americans to use Twitter, as well as other forms of communication, to send a message to Congress to end the stalemate.

"Let your members of Congress know, make a phone call, send an e-mail, tweet, keep the pressure on Washington and we can get past this," the President said.

But the tweet offensive may have backfired. Or is that back-tweeted?

According to the website Twitter Counter, the account lost tens of thousands of followers Friday.

White House reporters and the president's critics questioned whether Mr. Obama's re-election campaign was spamming its more than nine million followers.

"Bam's spam? President Barack Obama takes debt battle to Twitter, loses more than 33,000 followers," the Twitter account @whitehousepresscorps tweeted as of 6pm Friday.

(Via Political Ticker)