The campaign may have lost followers, but it gained buzz: Per Adam Ostrow at Mashable, “according to NM Incite, the #compromise hashtag had been used more than 22,000 times and reached 36 million users (followers of accounts using the hashtag) as of around 5 p.m. ET on Friday, and people had mentioned the President some 28,000 times in tweets.” If you’re launching a time-sensitive Twitter campaign, that’s the kind of ROI you’re looking for. Also, bad press is good press: if the @BarackObama people had launched their Twitter list from a different, non-intrusive account, would we all be writing about it? Hearing about it? Probably not…

This whole silly brouhaha raises the question of “What is Twitter for?” Is it for sharing important information — or for jealously hoarding followers? For the President of the United States — and for anyone in government — it should always be the former. We’re all pretty jaded about Twitter now, but what we saw yesterday was something incredibly cool: a centralized communications hub sending out actionable information quickly, efficiently and measurably. That is pretty incredible, and we are certainly going to see more innovation in how Twitter and other social media is used to campaign and message as 2012 gears up. Yesterday’s @BarackObama tweet-spree actually pushed forward in a really cool way and provided yet another set of shoulders for future social media campaigns to stand atop of.