It’s a day to celebrate for Barack Obama supporters. Let’s get to the big headlines at this moment. Barack Obama is reelected US president. The first picture of the first couple’s victory as Obama tweets a thank you to his voters for a second term.

 

So people were watching the election in the real world, and many of them were talking about the election in the digital one. Karin Caifa look at the role that social media took on during election day and some of the trends that defined the day.

 

As election day turned into election night, millions of votes and how they added up generated million of tweets, leading up to this one: a thank you from a newly reelected president of the United States.

 

For the United States of America, the best is yet to come.

 

Election day 2012 took its place as Twitter’s biggest political event ever. And as TV networks called the race, second screens lit up at a rate of more than 327,000 tweets per minute. Google searches pointed to an anxious electorate. Top search terms during the day included "election results", "exit polls", "election news" and "Who’s winning the election?" On Facebook, the number one term Tuesday morning and afternoon, variations of "vote", "voted", and "go vote." After projections, "Obama wins" jumped to the top spots on both Facebook and Google.

Meanwhile, among Instagram(一款运行在iPhone平台上的应用程序，以一种快速、美妙和有趣的方式将你随时抓拍下的图片与他人分享) photos, a bevy of proud ballot shots raised legal questions in states with restrictions on photography in polling places. In November 2008, about 37 percent of Americans said they used a social networking site. Fast forward to 2012, two thirds are socially engaged.

 

You guys are the best.

 

And while Republicans made social strides, they are still catching up to do - Mitt Romney amassed a respectable 1.7 million Twitter follows during his campaign; still, just a fraction of President Obama’s over 22 million.

 

In Chicago, I’m Karin Caifa.

 

Well, President Obama has been elected to a second term in the White House, but the next four years could present some big challenges for the president and the country. The fiscal cliff has to do with the US debt, some spending cuts and tax increases are said to kick in unless President Obama and Congress can come up with other ways to get the country’s debt under control. Most American voters said the economy was the number one issue in this election. One thing the financial experts look at in order to figure out how the economy is doing is the US stock markets, specifically, the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Yesterday, it dropped more than 300 points, the worst one day drop in a year. So, things are still pretty rough on Wall Street, and that’s why economic issues like the fiscal cliff are going to get a lot of attention.

 

What else lies ahead for the president’s second term? There is a possibility he could nominate more justices to the US Supreme Court. He nominated two during his first term, plus some members of the president’s cabinet have said they’ll step down, so he’ll need to fill those positions as well.

 

Before we leave election night behind, we want to point out some firsts that happened on Tuesday. Same-sex marriage became legal in Maryland and Maine. A similar vote in Washington was still pending. Judges and legislators have approved it in other states, but this was the first time that voters approved same-sex marriage.

 

In Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay politician elected to the US Senate. She’s also the first woman elected to the Senate from Wisconsin.

 

Voters in two states, Colorado and Washington, approved legalizing marijuana. That’s a first, but it’s also not a done deal(木已成舟的事情，无法改变的决定). The federal government says marijuana is illegal, and that overrules states rights in this case. And for the first time, a majority of voters in Puerto Rico said they would like the US territory to change its status and become a US state.