While those following the debate will be able to do so on their regular Twitter clients, it will also be hosted on an additional site that will display tweets by the moderator, debaters and members of the public in separate streams. Organizers, which include Andrew Hemingway — chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire — hope this will allow for a public conversation on Twitter that won’t get drowned out by its observers.
Adam Green, founder and CEO of 140 Dev, LLC — a consulting company that specializes in the Twitter API, helped create the debate platform, which will appear on 140TownHall.com. (The site is currently only in demo mode.)
“We basically have an online tool that tracks all tweets for a specific account name and hashtag,” Green says. “It takes all those tweets, aggre gates them into a database, separates the ones who are the lead speakers and puts them in one stream, and then puts the others in a separate stream.”
So this is how it will work during the debate: A lefthand column will display real-time stats, such as how many followers, mentions and retweets each candidate is receiving. A center column will show the debate as it happens, with the moderator in blue and candidate in white. A righthand column will feature a tweet box, so the public can comment as the debate is going on.
The system will also automatically retweet any related tweets into a separate Twitter account: @140townhall. Interested parties will be able to view the debate after it’s over as well: 140TownHall.com will maintain information about candidate stats, and the center column will switch tweets to chronological order, so people can easily view how the debate progressed.
Green says the candidates themselves will be participating in the debate, unlike the 2008...
