onthemedia:

Two quick thoughts on this.

One, it feels like maybe this would skew more toward Obama because Twitter’s demographic is young, tech-savvy, city-based. But maybe that’s wrong? 

Two, does this let you look at how the race is going in particular regions or is it just across the Twitterverse in general? Because if A, that’s kind of interesting. If B, less so.

markcoatney:

sunfoundation:

Twitter Launches Political Index: The Twitter Pulse Of The Election

Right now, if you want to know how the country feels about Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, you have to rely on pundits’ intuitions or traditional opinion polls, conducted as they always have been — by phone, over the course of hours or days. There’s no direct way to check the pulse of millions of actual people, simultaneously and directly, second by second.

Twitter is launching a tool today that it says will fill that gap, and sort through the 400 million tweets a day from 140 million active users. Twitter and real-time search engine Topsy are launching the “Twitter Political Index,” a daily assessment of how Twitter feels about Obama and Romney, in an election cycle that’s being played out moment-to-moment on the social service.

Interesting…