The ‘08 election gets a Twitter
I’ll admit it: I’ve been absolutely binging on 2008 election news the last few months, as anyone following my Twitter feed will be able to attest to.
And speaking of Twitter, Fred Wilson of A VC alerted me to a nifty new Twitter presence simply called Election 2008, located on your interwebs dials at election.twitter.com.
Here’s what it does: it pulls selected Twitter posts (”tweets”) based on keywords and streams them in real time. So without having to refresh the page, you get a flowing river of conversational snippets about the election, such as snippy little snippets such as this one:
Wonder if McCain feels Abu Ghraib would make a good international presidential training unit
Based on that example, we can infer that it was published by the Election 2008 site because it included the keyword McCain. Meanwhile, at the top the Election 2008 page, we see “hot election topics” – such as #obamashot, which seems to refer to an impromptu drinking game set up just in time for tonight’s presidential debate! – that allow us to “drill down” to see specific election-related topics.
My current favorite, I must further admit, is the stream for Jack Cafferty, an old time New York news anchor turned curmudgeonly analyst for CNN. After taking a look at a clip of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, Cafferty absolutely rips Palin’s rambling and evasive answers, calling them pathetic:
(via Talking Points Memo)
Reactions are teeming in from the twittersphere, such as this:
Retweeting: @caseymckinnon FINALLY someone tells it like it is (Jack Cafferty speaks frankly about Sarah Palin) http://is.gd/3bV0
As I mentioned in my recent story on new social media site Dwigger, the ability to create interesting or meaningful streams of information (and community) around the flood of data and conversations that are taking place on the Internet every second of the day is very exciting stuff indeed.
And in the meantime, onward with the presidential debates!
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