Romney vs. Obama: Battle of the tech titans

Twitter has launched its own tracking site for comparing the Tweets of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Dubbed the Twitter Political Index, the site tracks which candidate leads among messages of 140 characters or less.

“We started by looking at the explosion at tweet volume since last election. There were 1.8 million tweets on the election day in 2008.  That’s about six minutes on Twitter today, “Adam Sharp, Twitter’s head of government news and social innovation, told ABC News. “We were looking at follower growth and audience reaction to the State of Union and what we discovered was that the conversation, which were happening in a measurable public space, could be used to create a real-time index.”

(Click here to follow updates from the "Twindex.")

While President Obama is leading in today's Twitter mentions, his smartphone app is floundering compared to Romney's.  Both campaigns launched their apps today, but this morning, Romney ranked #14 among free apps, while Obama's app ranked at #165.  Romney's campaign announced earlier this week that the news of his choice for vice president would be announced via the iPhone and Android application.