The Republican party s presidential hopefuls weren t the only ones to get some TV airtime in Thursday s night primary debate.
Facebook, which co-hosted the Cleveland event with FOX News, said Friday that about 7.5 million people took to the social media website to discuss the GOP debate, generating more than 20 million posts, comments, and likes.
Before, during and after this first, prime-time GOP debate, Facebook was the clear destination for political conversation, wrote Jason White, who heads Facebook s Media Partnerships, in a blog post about the topic.
Immigration, racial issues, the economy, education and abortion were the hottest topics on Facebook and real estate-mogul Donald Trump was most-talked about candidate.
Tech companies have partnered with media outlets in past presidential debates. For example, CNN in the 2008 presidential election cycle used questions submitted through Google-owned Youtube.
But with more than 4 billion video views and about 210 million U.S. active users on Facebook, the social networking company and FOX News also fielded questions through videos submitted on the site.
Some users asked the 10 GOP candidates on stage what they would do to stop terrorism from ISIS while another asked if any of the candidates received a word from God on what they should do and take care of first.
Facebook, which had its logo displayed behind the candidates, earned praise from some analysts for its role in last night s debate while Twitter got some criticism.
We think this is a prime example of a live event that Twitter should be dominating, and yet it wasn t. wrote Bob Peck, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey in a note on Friday.
Photo: Republican presidential candidates (L-R) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Donald Trump and Jeb Bush participate in the first prime-time presidential debate hosted by FOX News and Facebook at the Quicken Loans Arena August 6, 2015 in Cleveland, Ohio. The top-ten GOP candidates were selected to participate in the debate based on their rank in an average of the five most recent national political polls. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)