'Four more years' shatters Twitter records

It was a simple photo and the simplest of tweets. President Obama’s “Four more years” message, posted shortly before his official acceptance of the presidency part deux, created a social media explosion and became the most retweeted tweet ever.

As of Wednesday morning, it was retweeted more than 690,000 times.

Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012

There were more than 31 million tweets on Election Day – reaching the 327,452 tweet-per-minute mark at 11:19 p.m. ET, when networks called his win. Compare that to Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. At the time, it set a new record for politics on Twitter, with 54,756 tweets per minute.

Obama's tweet also beat out pop star Justin Bieber's tweet from earlier this year that paid tribute to a fan who died of cancer.

At the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney’s speech hit the tweet peak for the whole convention, topping off at 14,289 tweets per minute. Even the Olympics can’t compare. During the closing ceremonies, the Spice Girls' performance only hit the 116,000 tweet-per-minute mark.

Top tweeters hailed from states like Kansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee, while Americans in states like Maine, Wyoming and New York were the least chatty on Twitter. Tweets peaked at 10:32 p.m. ET when the election outcome became clear – Obama chatter dominated with 1,383,157 tweets versus Romney’s 543,746 mentions.

Facebook also blew up the social media scene with “Obama wins” as the top-mentioned term on the site. “Romney,” “President,” “Four more years” and “come on” also topped the charts.

On Tuesday, voters were aglow with pride, sharing their “I voted stickers” and their polling center candids with pride on Instagram.  People posted more than 680,000 photos with the term "vote" and more than 250,000 photos with some variation on the word election. More than 3 million men and 6 million women shared with friends that they voted on Tuesday.

But on the morning after, social media is ripe with sarcasm and little bitterness.

Mitt Romney said "If you can't afford college, school isn't for you." Well, if you can't win an election, being president isn't for you!

— Meek Mill (@MeekMilli_MMG) November 7, 2012

Great news that Obama won the election. Scary to think one of the most powerful countries in the world was nearly run by an imbecile

— Sam Kelly (@samkellymusic) November 7, 2012

This has nothing to do with Mitt Romney not being good enough. It has everything to do with us not being good enough for him. #Romney2012

— matt whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) November 7, 2012

Just because you are right, does not mean you win.Tonight proved it.#romney2012 #tcot

— Scott for #ROMNEY (@TeaPartyNJ) November 7, 2012