At midnight last night, Twitter launched a new sub-site called Election2008.
[The new site] will feature an interface that regular Twitter users will instantly recognize. There will be one major difference however. Gone is the famously outdated question “What are you doing?” (Twitter was initially just about people saying what they were doing), it has been replaced with “What do you think?”
The idea of course, is to get people’s opinions on politics topics, the candidates and larger issues like the economy. It’s no coincidence that the site is launching on the eve of the first debate between Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain. Twitter has made note of the surges it’s seen during the primary debates and more recently the DNC and RNC national convention key speeches.
Fred Wilson points out that you don’t have to be a twitter member or user to use election.twitter.com and predicts:
For many people, it will simply be a way to quickly check in on the zeitgeist of the election. If you are a twitter user, you can join the conversation by posting directly from election.twitter.com and your update will go to everyone who follows you and into the election timeline.
Twitter launched this new service in time for tonight’s debate (or town hall meeting depending if McCain shows). I plan to watch in our living room with the debate on the big screen and election.twitter.com on the coffee table on a laptop. It will be like the stock price feed that flies across the bottom CNBC when the market is open. I expect it will add a new dimension to the debate watching experience and I am excited about it.
While on the topic of Twitter, we’ve set up a Twitter feed for The Moderate Voice. Go to twitter.com/TMV to follow us.
Image by rcarver via Flickr.