Social Sites Offer 'New' Way To Experience Presidential Debates

News.com notes that the social sites have been burning up in the wake of the debates, as users create more content than it's possible to follow. Facebook specifically set up an area for debate viewers to post messages and take surveys during the events. Some participants found it a bit worthless, and the article refers to the experience as 'information overload'. "No doubt, the political twitterers must've felt empowered to know their Soundboard comments were being beamed out to an audience of potentially millions of Facebook users, and, if plucked by ABC's designated Facebook-monitoring reporter on TV, millions of offline viewers as well. Still, it's a little unclear whether the comments will prove all that useful for campaigns looking to boost their candidates' standing."

Comments

Re:Talking to my grandfather about the 1930s.

[neapolitan]

Yes, I have heard stuff like this repeated a lot too. This may be true, but I do not think that it is all the politician's fault. I think it is partly the fact that the population of the USA was probably a fraction (~120 million) of what it is today. It is simply not reasonable to have any contact with any meaningful fraction of your electorate. I think the candidates DO, given their security and time limitations, make an effort to go out there and shake people's hands.

Think about your state -- this is probably analogous to the USA quite a while ago. I have shaken my state governor's hand (I went to Boys' state) and got to talk to him a bit. I dated a girl from a small country in Europe, and she had met their president numerous times (and he knew her father by first name). It is partly just a function of the US becoming very large that this is not possible.

P.S. Back when Slashdot was starting, me and 'Taco were really tight, PM'ing every night, but now he doesn't even answer the emails I send to him... :p