If you just can’t stand to wait until late tonight or early tomorrow to find out the results of Super Tuesday, there are some ways to abate the political DT’s. You could stare at CNN and Fox all day, or you could see real people’s reactions and feelings. In this case, Google and Twitter have you covered.
Okay, okay. When I said “real people,” I meant people techo-hip and savvy enough to be using a microblogging platform like Twitter, which isn’t, not even close, representative of the American whole. But still, this is pretty interesting.
Google Maps has teamed up with Twitter and Twittervision, which is a real-time platform for viewing microblogging posts around the world, to give a glimpse into how America, and the world, are viewing the Presidential primaries right now, in real time.
(While it’s good news for Twitter that a Google wing has taken them under, bear in mind that the founders of Twitter used to work for Google…so they gots connections.)
Watching, if you’re a social observer like I am, is better than sitting on a bench at the mall, especially since the entire world seems to be watching, too.
Britney Bohnet, from the “Google Elections Team” (that’s an interesting department to be in, don’t you think?) blogs about it this way:
“We’ve joined forces with Twitter to give you instant updates on Super Tuesday. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, you can send a simple text message about your voting experience. Huge turnout? Taking too long in line? Did you just vote for the first time? We want it all, if you can keep to 140 characters or less.”
I watched the mapped action between 3:10 and 3:25, and learned some pretty interesting things from the Super Tuesday Map, like:
Dan Martinez, out in San Jose (Google’s hometown), convinced his dad to vote in the primaries:
Valerie Lancaster, of Nashville, Tn, says her peers aren’t busting down the doors to vote:
They’re watching us in Chile, and think the Obama’s nomenclatural similarity to America’s number one public enemy is fairly amusing:
That there really are Democrats in Texas:
And that they’re watching in Spain, France, Israel, and Africa. This could be the most popular Presidential primary in American history.
