When you have over 9 million followers, its not a terrible thing to lose 40,000 followers, but President Obama's social media experiment seems to have backfired, insofar as it generated the wrong kind of headlines.
Obama Loses 36,000+ Twitter Followers in #Compromise Campaign notes Mashable, a site focused on social media news, linking to a chart.L.A. Times: President Obama's debt-ceiling tweets prompt an 'unfollow Friday' The New York Daily News: President Barack Obama takes debt battle to Twitter, loses more than 40,000 followers in one day Washington Post:

Thousands 'unfollow' @barackobama on Twitter Republicans used the opportunity to respond on Twitter with their own set of zingers. "Since @BarackObama's busy spamming folks on Twitter, @TomRooney was kind enough to share a copy of BO's debt plan: http://1.usa.gov/olI0Cc," Congressman Patrick McHenry wrote linking to a blank document.Presidential candidate Herman Cain wrote:  "@BarackObama calls for bipartisanship. Then tweets out names of GOP lawmakers to attack. #youredoingitwrong #compromise"The RNC tweeted: Dear @BarackObama, requesting that people Twitter spam members of Congress isn’t the same as having a debt plan of your own.
At the end of the day, the campaign may have had some further unintended consequences.
A Senate Republican staffer told National Journal that Republican Senators, in total, added about 6,500 new followers throughout the afternoon.