I'm not big into politics, but my husband is very interested, if not one who goes out and campaigns. He reads up on the candidates, listens to the pundits, and visits the websites.
Most of my past election night experiences have been surrounding the TV. I remember when George H.W. Bush won. (I only remember because at the time, I was young enough that the only president I could remember to that point was Reagan.) I remember watching CBS and Dan Rather's crazy comments late into the night on Election Night, 2000.
Since 2005, when we moved to this house, we've been without any form of television channels. When Obama was elected, I think I just hopped on the computer for a minute right before bed.
Tonight, I decided to see how the election was going. I couldn't believe how fast things were updating! When I first logged in, Google was registering over 300 search results from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. After popping on the Des Moines Register page, where they had a news feed pulling all the #ia2010 Twitter posts, I finally saw, for the first time, how Twitter provides an up-to-the-minute personalized news feed in a way that CNN or NBC could never do. One tweet (that I now can't find) even said that Election 2010 was the biggest non-sporting event on the web in history, bigger than Obama's election.
I can't help wondering...is that because more people are interested, or because more people - like me - are wired?
ETA: The Des Moines Register's site couldn't keep up! Twitter could. Interesting...
P.S. I made the graphic with help from an online Photoshop tutorial. I LOVE online tutorials.
Wow. I had no idea. I went to bed. But, I looked up the results the next day on-line. Hope that counts for something. It really is amazing, isn't it. How information is readily available to us if we chose to consume it? Nice thing about your avenue is you don't have to listen to all the analysts, or you can listen to the ones that you chose to listen to instead of relying on what the network has decided you need to hear. Thanks for sharing your experience! **Really - no TV since 2005???
ReplyDeleteMore young people are involve now a days because of facebook ,twitter and other social media.
ReplyDeleteYes, the most amazing thing was that I could watch a movie on election night with an occasional glance at my Ipad and was able to keep up to date with election returns through out the country with VERY little effort!
ReplyDeleteA far cry from when they couldn't announce Kennedy's election until the next day because all the votes had yet to be tallied on election eve!!!!
PS Reagan may be the first president you remember...but he is the first president I actually voted for!!! What I really remember is watching the watergate hearings in 1974!!! I wonder what Twitter would make of such a hearing today?????