A certain search giant might as well get it over with and release some sort of product mashup called Google Election. In the meantime, though, YouTube and Google Moderator have come back into the spotlight as important tools in a series of political interviews.
A post on the YouTube Blog explains, “YouTube and Google partnered with the Politico and WJLA to give Virginian voters the opportunity to submit text or video questions for the state’s three Democratic gubernatorial candidates . . . . Submissions took place on a new tool called Google Moderator, which allows you not only to submit questions or ideas, but also to vote on the submissions of others, moving them up or down in importance.”
And the experiment seems to have been a huge success, considering that the post then continues, “Thousands of Virginians took part in the interactive interview, and last night WJLA and the Politico aired the results, in which all three candidates answered the top questions on television.”
A similar project is already planned for the fall and Virginia’s general gubernatorial election, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f5Idm2cYbAAs for now, you can watch (or skim through) a 45-minute clip of last night’s event if you’re interested in politics or just want to see what sort of user-generated discussion points came up.
