Campaign workers tracked the contributions, reaching the goal by noon, and then topping $750,000 by late afternoon. "We were kind of watching on Twitter, and Facebook, and the blogs, and the volunteers were saying, 'I think we can go to a million,'" Luidhardt recalls. In response, the campaign chiefs set a new goal of $1 million. By midnight, the total was over $1.3 million. The next day, the campaign raised the same amount again, and nearly $1.7 million the day after that.

"You can't say social media made this happen," LaRosa says. "But without it, it couldn't have happened….It was the network set-up online that responded."

Over the entire campaign, more than $12 million was raised, with Twitter being one of the largest fund-raising channels, according to Luidhardt. The influx of funds made it possible to pour a in the campaign's last 10 days on conventional campaign tools such as TV, newspaper and radio ads.  

But the money also went into targeted at Republican-leaning districts close by the campaign's 10 regional offices.  Willington called these "Google blasts" and they asked people to volunteer for the final weekend of the campaign. The offices were flooded with more volunteers than they could handle for the phone banks. Willington quickly had simple cell phone applications created. Volunteers downloaded them to get lists of targeted voters whom they could call with their cell phones.

The poll results and the over-the-top donations electrified the state and the nation. In just two days, for example, Twitter followers of @scottbrownma soared from 11,000 to , according to Twittergrader. The existing online campaign infrastructure was able to leverage that attention, with the local race fueling national commentary, blogging, Facebook activity and tweeting, feeding back through conventional media outlets and a web of interconnected social networks to local voters in Massachusetts.