Social media
The website Tweetminster has a ‘real-time sentiment tracker', which uses an algorithm to track who is being tweeted about, how much and with what sentiment. It then aggregates all this data into an index. It also tracked the hashtag ‘#LeadersDebate' last night and tallies 184,396 tweets at an average of 29 per second. More useful is a tool that will tell you whether your local MP is on Twitter.
Meanwhile Democracy UK's Facebook page featured an app called Rate the Debate that was supposed to represent general sentiment in real time, but it crashed. Even if it hadn't, you have to question how much more value those following the debate in ‘real time' got over those who just read or heard about it subsequently.
But it's not just trendy new social media offerings that are getting in a lather about this election; even Google felt moved to blog about it. In a post entitled "Brits search for a leader", Google revealed peaks in keyword searches coinciding with certain statement. It looks like Google is being primarily used to decipher some of the terms used, but it also provides some analytical tools like the one embedded below, which gives an idea of the popularity of keyword searches.
The general consensus is that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg ‘won' the debate, and I congratulate him. But no amount of multimedia gimmickry can hide the fact that none of the parties have said or done much to distinguish themselves. Technology is just a tool, an enabler. It's what you do with it that counts.
