Erik in New York City was frustrated because, as an independent voter, he wasn’t allowed to cast a primary ballot. Dan in Minneapolis spotted Al Franken at the St. Louis Park High School caucus location, but there was no sign of Dan’s first-grade teacher. And Peter in Lowell, Mass., who voted at the fire station down the street from his house, wanted it known that a fire engine turned on its lights and siren while he was casting his choice.
These election-day snapshots are not from man-on-the-street interviews. They are yet another Google offering. The search giant teamed up with a company called Twitter to create the killer Super Tuesday Web application. Twitter is a group-messaging service that allows users to hold a Web-based conversation using instant and text messaging. Users subscribe to each other’s feeds to receive short updates–or “follow”-friends.
Twitter users have been broadcasting their on-scene reports on all things primary-their hopes, their fears-throughout the day. The messages, which are superimposed over a Google Super Tuesday map, provide real-time updates that offer a (mostly) refreshing glimpse at how regular folks-or at least regular folks savvy with cell-phone and computer messaging–are reacting to the day’s events. And it’s gone global. Twitter users have chimed in with messages, or “tweets,” from all over the country–and from Canada, France, Japan, Chile, New Zealand, Holland and other countries. “It’s funny to see someone all the way out in Morocco saying they voted [by absentee ballot] or talking about a friend who voted,” says Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. (You have to be a Twitter member to send in your messages, but not to read them.) Google will post Tuesday’s greatest hits on Thursday.
Google is also putting its YouTube property to work. On its Super Tuesday page, the video site also uses a map to link to pop-up clips by average Joes, campaign staffs and news organizations (each labeled). The playful sophisticates at Tech President are following the evening’s events on a live blog, with frequent contributions from commenters around the country (sample post: “Obama wins IL. Another total shocker. I’m shocked.”) Users of Flickr, the immensely popular photo-sharing site, have been posting photographs tagged “supertuesday” in the hundreds, and MTV has put together a “Street Team” of citizen journalists who file live broadcasts to the Choose or Lose site from polling stations, caucuses and candidate rallies with new mobile-to-Web technology.
These sites capture the passion, excitement and fun of a night where 24 states are holding caucuses and primary elections, and voter turnout is expected to shatter records. But like the rest of the Web, they’re prone to pass along inanities, rumor, hearsay and erroneous information, often mixed in with fact. As if Peter in Lowell didn’t have enough to be perturbed about.
