Patrick Ruffini

Because those of us in Washington can’t stop talking about the next Presidential election before the current one is over, some thoughts are in order on the Texts from Hillary Clinton tumblog that’s become the viral meme of the week (runner up: Paul Ryan Gosling).

As of this writing, this Tumblr has 211,385 likes, and has been shared 56,800 unique times (you can keep track of the exact numbers by running this simple API call). The average person who shares political content on Facebook has around 300 friends, so up to 17 million people have seen a link to the site on their Facebook news feed. That’s one tenth of all U.S. Facebook users — and the share count continues to grow rapidly.

Numbers like this confirm that social media is now mass media. Perceptions of Hillary Clinton are being reshaped in a massive way thanks to viral remixing of this (frankly) badass photo released this week, and judging from the Republican posts in my feed, things are looking up for the Secretary of State.

Prior to this week, people had largely overlooked Hillary Clinton as a 2016 Presidential contender, but recent comments by Bill Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, coupled with a degree of social media excitement that eluded her in 2008, may have singlehandedly changed the conversation about her prospects.