At 11:16 p.m. on Election Day, President Obama’s Twitter feed posted a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama hugging each other, with the statement “Four more years”:

By Wednesday morning, the post had topped 500,000 retweets, the media news site revealed. New York Daily News reports that Obama’s tweet racked up more than 400,000 hits in just two hours. The second-most popular tweet, posted by Justin Bieber, received more than 200,000 retweets.

Guinness World Records Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday said: "Obama did more than just beat Romney; he also ousted Justin Bieber from the Twitter top spot and broke the most significant social media records to date."

Now at 720k retweets and 250k favorite stars.

So, fewer than a million hits.

In Silicon Valley startup land, to paraphrase Chris Dixon, ain't no one gonna fund that.

The second most popular tweet of all time:

 Who is that?

He's just a girl in this world. Right, President Obama?

It's also the most popular Facebook post of all time:

That Facebook post is now at 3.5 million likes and 500k shares on Facebook.

 Wow.

I know, right?

Well, do you measure "hits" on the surface, or the reach of the audience impressions? 

A good question that I don't think Twitter itself has ever answered.

Audience impressions is hard to measure because who actually knows how many followers saw the tweet.

Whereas with retweets and stars, at least we know that number of people took some (very basic) action. 

Good point. I like how Path solved for this, showing you how many people may have "viewed" your post. 

My best guess that the reason Twitter does not show number of views is that this number would be ridiculously low for most tweets.

You look like you could use some skateboarding Obama, my friend.

What's the total reach of that tweet via twitter? (Obviously, it has not reached further than that via other social media & news articles). 

What does "total reach" mean? Twitter never defines that term.

It's one of Twitter's great failings. No way to know how many people ACTUALLY saw it. 

 Actually, there is if you want to pay a lot of money. Companies doing twitter metrics on the global scale have some surprising stuff. Worked with Searchmetrics last year on the rollout of one of their suites that was amazing. That one could track things across 125 platforms. As in Rt'd, then shared to FB, liked X times there, spread over to social network X,... It was amazing.. But pricey.  Pepsi had a kickass system in place getting Real Time metrics down at SXSW that the designer should be winning accolades for - but it's internal proprietary, so who writes about that? I'm spacing on my friend Matt Hixon's company's name (argh) out of Seattle - but their current ability to show you how a tweet spreads beyond one level is amazing. Marketing tech already has reach, sentiment, metrics and views way pat what you'd expect. It will be their lifeblood as we shift over, so they are way ahead of what you'd expect. 

Lucretia, thanks for the info!

Hopefully tools like this will become more affordable in the future...

 Can't hate anything that beats Bieber....

Right. Neither Obama nor, soon, Oppa Gangnam Style.

See also: The most retweeted tweet of all time...