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Presidential Debates Held Via Twitter

by Terrence O'Brien on June 25, 2008 at 05:38 PM


We've been talking about this election cycle being the being the true beginning of politics in the Internet age, but if you had told us even just a few weeks ago that the first campaign sanctioned debate between the Obama and McCain camps would be held via Twitter, we would have thought you were crazy. But that is exactly the venue that has representatives from the campaigns facing off in a debate moderated by Ana Marie Cox, a blogger at techPresident.

The 140 character limit that Twitter imposes on its messages does stymie the ability for the campaigns to delve too deeply into policy issues -- not to mention compromising their adherence to the constructs of the English language -- but it also limit their ability to give long winded non-answers to questions.

The debate has allowed the average American (well, the average American with a Twitter account at least) to participate in the discussion in a way the YouTube debates promised, but failed to deliver on. [Source: BetaNews]

Tags: barack obama, BarackObama, elections, john mccain, JohnMccain, mccain, obama, politics, twitter

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