Former Gingrich Staffer: 80% Twitter Followers are Fake; Gingrich Loses 20,000 Followers in a Week

This is hilarious or devastating, depending on your view of Newt Gingrich.  Mr. Gingrich recently announced that he would be running for President; however, he was met with little coverage and even less support.

But somehow he amassed a tremendous amount of Twitter followers:

1,325,939 followers.  That's over twice the number of followers of fellow Republican and former VP candidate Sarah Palin:

Approximately twenty times the number of followers of Republican Presidential nomination opponent Michele Bachmann:

And about 25 times the number of followers of opponent Herman Cain:

Well, there's a reason for that:  most of them are fake.  80% to be precise.  That's according to Gingrich's former staffer.  According to him, Gingrich hired a firm to create accounts in order to make Gingrich's campaign appear to be on a roll.  The staffer estimated that only 10% of the users are real.

In fact, even if the fact that Gingrich is leading every other Republican candidate and his staffer's statement isn't evidence enough, even more damning evidence comes from Twitaholic.  According to the site, Gingrich has only gained 18,000 followers in the last year.  In fact, since he announced that he intends to run for President in May, he's only gained 10,000:

Those 10,000 are now gone, along with more.  According to Twitter Counter, Gingrich has lost 20,000 followers in the last week alone:

For a candidate whose main fault is his image problem, this could be the nail in his already feeble Presidential campaign.  Twitter Counter further predicts that Gingrich will continue to lose followers:

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has been gaining followers steadily:

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