This Tuesday, the eyes of the world will be focused on the U.S. election. Whatever the outcome, history will be made. There are a number of ways you can watch coverage of and participate in the election. First and foremost, you can vote and watch coverage on TV. But did you also know that there are options for following along with the election on your favorite microblogging platforms? No longer do you have to wait hours or days for the political pundits and bloggers to say their bit. Microblogging makes feedback on election day nearly instantaneous.
We’ve highlighted what we see as the main sources for microblogging election coverage:
(If you know of another good source, please leave a comment below).
socialmedian
This aggregation platform will be pulling in all kinds of media from Tweets to blog posts to Flickr photos. They’ll widgetize all the updates they find and feature them on websites such as washingtonpost.com, guardian.co.uk, and mediadeluge.com.
If you’re more interested in watching instead of participating, you can also view the entire socialmedian feed or filter it out by candidate or view a feed for the poll information. In Digg-like fashion, they support both popular news and the up-and-coming news.
This component has been well-known and live for a while now, but Twitter has their own election center. The main feature of the center include a scrolling view of election-related tweets.
Twitter also allows you to filter tweets by presidential and vice presidential candidate, as well as view the latest tweet from the two main presidential candidates. There’s also an area where it shows the hot topics of the election.
FriendFeed
While it doesn’t really fall under the realm of microblogging, it does a great job of aggregating information from a wide array of sources, including microblogs. This looks to be limited to only those who are actually members of the room, which is currently only 10 people.
FriendFeed also only shows you a limited network of people, so it might actually be more pertinent to what your friends are saying rather than what everyone is saying.
TwitterVoteReport
A more proactive solution is TwitterVoteReport. This tool allows you to interface with Twitter in order to give aid and insight to other users who are having difficulty in voting. Some of the suggested functions are warning users of long lines or broken machines, as well as giving an indication of the overall voting experience.
TwitterVoteReport is meant to be a geographically-confined service so you can pinpoint what’s going on in your area. You can send in tweets (by use of #votereport), SMS, or voice mail messages. There are also iPhone and Android applications (user participation guide).
Your Network of Choice
The source for the most relevant info to you will be whatever microblogging platform you choose to use. There will be no shortage of election related material, so just listen in. You can also participate in election debates and discussions with other users you’re friends with. Sending tips about line lengths, tech issues and your overall experience.
There are plenty of options if you choose not to watch TV. The above are just cases of microblogging coverage, but there will also be an influx of blog posts and web content.
