Traditional polls still did a better job of predicting the outcome of Saturday's South Carolina primary, but a backwards look at Twitter may show why and how Newt Gingrich scored such a decisive, 12-point victory over national front runner Mitt Romney. And in some regards, social media was able to tell a story in South Carolina that polls could not.

Public Policy Polling did a much better job than social media analytics by GlobalPoint in predicting the actual results of Saturday's results, in large part because Ron Paul's votes have yet to catch up with his social media mentions. To its credit, though, Global point saw Gingrich with 31 percent of the vote to Romney's 19 percent, while the traditional poll was prediciting a much tighter, six-point race.

What social media did do better than traditional polls, however, is show how Gingrich's support surged followed Thursday night's debate. That night could have been a toss-up for Gingrich: while pundits said Gingrich held his own and Romney may have lost ground, Gingrich had the added potential pitfall of an ABC News interview with his ex-wife that night.

Twitter almost instantly showed that the ABC interview was not going to be a factor, and any mentions of the interview - positive or negative - may have actually helped Gingrich by pushing negative, social media comments about his debate performance to the background.

Meanwhile, OhMyGov is reporting that Gingrich saw a surge in Facebook fans and Twitter followers in the hours that followed the debate. That followed a surge of social media activity (and a corresponding bump in the polls) for Gingrich following the first of two debates in South Carolina on Jan. 16.

The lesson thus far in the 2012 election that social media, like traditional polling, can't accurately predict races (particularly races involving Ron Paul, it would seem). But as researchers spend more time analyzing the data, social media is showing itself as an effective tool in better understanding a presidential campaign, which amounts to a daily war of attrition for public sentiment.

In return, Craigslist has now filed its own suit in federal court in South Carolina, "seeking declaratory relief and a restraining order with respect to criminal charges he [McMaster] has repeatedly threatened against Craigslist and its executives."

In his ultimatum, McMaster asks Craigslist to "remove the portions of the Internet site dedicated to South Carolina and its municipal regions which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material" within ten (10) days." Given that anybody can post anything on Craigslist (except for the new 'Adult Services' section, which is now closely monitored), this is far too broad a statement and Buckmaster rightly argues that Craigslist would just have to close shop in South Carolina.

The South Carolina "adult services" section of Craigslist currently only features a few ads, and they are about as tame as the ads for chatlines for singles that run on late-night TV all over the country. At this point, most ads just feature a (non-pornographic) photo and a phone number.

A number of legal experts have argued that the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects Craigslist from criminal prosecution, as, according to the DMCA, an "interactive computer service" can not be held responsible for content posted on the service's site.