President Obama's social media team unleashed a hailstorm of tweets today, galvanizing his followers to support a bipartisan debt ceiling compromise. The Presidential tweets were also aimed directly at his opponents, mostly Republicans, on Twitter. [At the time of publication, @BarackObama was still putting forth updates.]

The President's previous call to action over debt issues via social media crashed the congressional website [2], according to widespread reports. That initiative was aimed more generally at U.S. citizens.

Today's effort garnered a similarly impressive response. CBS News [3] reported: "The Capital call center alerted House offices Friday that the high level of incoming calls [following the Twitter campaign] put the House phone circuits near capacity."

The Presidential tweets today shined a spotlight on Republicans' Twitter accounts, which could lead them to gain more social media followers ironically. 

Even though Obama's social media following includes over 9 million on Twitter and a staggering 22 million [4] on Facebook, independent reports [5] via Politifact and researcher Mark Senak find Republican congressmen surpass their democratic counterparts in social media, in terms of raw follower count and number of @replys (even when excluding [6] [PDF] @SenatorJohnMcCain's 1.7 million followers).

There's much to learn about how social media influences policy and elections. In the 2010 midterm election [7], many members of contentious races won despite poor social media count, such as Harry Reid, who was easily outmatched on Twitter by newcomer, Sharon Angle--yet, Reid kept his seat (with a safe electoral cushion).

And according to an official statement by YouTube, Republican 2012 presidential contender Tim Pawlenty holds the crown [8] for most views of a candidate on the video platform, yet is near the bottom of the polls [9] (via RealClearPolitics).

The President used Facebook aggressively and effectively in the 2008 election [10]. Today his team only posted one update there about debt issues. They remained silent on Google+, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. (Where's the love for Foursquare, Diaspora, and Instagram? Maybe the next campaign.)

Follow Greg Ferenstein on Twitter [11] and Google+ [12]. Also, follow Fast Company on Twitter [13].

[Image: Flickr user Geoff Livingston [14]]