It's now just about 24 hours since the media officially announced that Barack Obama will be our next President of the United States. History was made last night and many of us are still walking around in awe today with a happy grin on our face and a very optimistic attitude. It also helped that it was November 5th and was sunny and hit 70 degrees in Western New York as well as a good portion of this country!
So, did you get your free Starbuck's yesterday? I didn't get a chance but my daughter Kelsey said she did. She was disappointed however that they ran out of "I voted" stickers because it was her first time voting. See the Starbuck's ad in my previous post.
Participating Krispy Kreme donut shops also had a free promotional offer and were giving customers a free star-shaped donut with red, white and blue sprinkles to those that showed their "I Voted" sticker (sorry Kelsey no donuts for you). Online they changed their traditional Krispy Kreme "hot light" sign signaling a new batch of donuts in stores "Hot Now" to instead read "Hot Vote Now".
If you didn't get free coffee or a donut, Ben & Jerry's was also "Celebrating Democracy" by offering a free scoop of ice cream between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. at participating scoop shops. Ben & Jerry's website has a link to a Facebook page that includes a special locator function that lists 24 colleges and universities around the country where company reps where scooping free Election Day ice cream in student unions and on campuses. Facebook profile pages have been created for each on-campus event with RSVP capability.
"We want to thank you for voting by giving you a free scoop of ice cream," reads the Ben & Jerry's college site Facebook copy. "If you did not vote, we'll give you a scoop anyway, but no complaining about the results"¦or the size of your scoop."
Besides theses promotions, online sites, especially social media, where all buzzing last night. I was tuned into Twitter's Election Day page that had so many tweets coming through it was hard to keep up with them. It was amazing to read the tweets that announced when a network proclaimed a state's winner. When Obama won Ohio I read about it on Twitter first before ABC news proclaimed it.
CNN.com reported today that they brought in 27 million unique visitors to their site on election day, a record. Comscore says they averaged just 5 million unique daily visitors in September, so this is more than 5x normal traffic. The site also generated an record 276 million page views.
So I don't think anything could top a day that gave us free coffee, red, white and blue sprinkled donuts, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, great warm weather, record-breaking online visitors and the democratic election of America's first black president!! Let's keep the momentum going!
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