One of the most exciting things about last week’s election debate was the huge amount of audience interaction both on ITV.com and on sites like Twitter. From the opening salvo through to the final wrap thousands of people were casting votes, writing comments and engaging in their own mini debates. It is expected that the audience for tonight’s debate will be smaller than last week as it is being screened on Sky rather than ITV. It is however very likely that the debate will be just as fierce. One of the best ways you can get a second view of the debate is to follow the comments on Twitter. Twitter has been around for several years now, but if you haven’t yet joined the leaders debate is a great way to start. You can track people’s comments , get an instant reaction to the leaders’ opinions and all without even having to join the debate. Unless of course you want to. So here then is five ways you can use Twitter to share the experience with as many as 40,000 others.
1 Create a Twitter profile - This is a very quick and simple process. You simply go to Twitter.com and click on the large yellow button the left marked ‘let me in’ . You then need to give yourself a user name and add a password and your email address. You might have to get creative with the user name as your Christian name and surname may already be taken. An easy way of getting around this is to add an underscore between the names. Alternatively just use a nickname. You then click on ‘create the account’ and you will get an email confirming that you are now registered with Twitter.
2 Download Tweetdeck – You can just follow people using the Twitter homepage, however a far superior method of keeping abreast of the latest tweets is to use a third party application like Tweetdeck. To download this go to Tweetdeck.com and follow the instructions. You may need to download a application called Adobe Air. Don’t worry though, both Tweetdeck and Adobe Air will only take around a minute to grab. Once you have downloaded Tweetdeck you will be asked to enter your Twitter name and password. Add those and you are ready now to start tracking the debate.
3 Follow the debate - You should now have three columns in front of you. One is for tweets of people you follow. Another is, for tweets where you are mentioned and the third will be for direct messages. You now need to create a fourth so you can follow what people are saying about the debate. When tweeters want to share their views about a particular topic they preface the keyword with a hash tag. So for tonight the key word is leadersdebate (no one actively chooses these they just kind of evolve from within the Twitter community ) so you need to input #leadersdebate into the search button on Tweetdeck which is the button with the magnifying glass. This will then bring down the latest tweets about the debate. Be warned, it will change very quickly though because of the sheer volume of tweets, but you will be able to get a good grasp of what people are saying. If you want to focus on one of the three would-be leaders then create another column by inputting Brown, Cameron Clegg with a hash tag into the search bar.
4 Find people to follow - When you set up your Twitter account it will give you the option to find people you know already on Twitter and to follow what they say. That means that every time they tweet their words will end up in the far left column. Twitter will let you search your email list or Facebook account for friends. It is up to you if you are happy to follow people, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. During the debate though you might find people you think are erudite, amusing or just interesting. If you want to follow these people on a permanent basis. You simply click on the user name – which is underneath their image on Twitter So if you want to follow them click here.
5 Add your own comments – If you want add you comments to the debate, simply click the yellow button on Tweetdeck and type your views – Remember as this is Twitter you only have 140 charactars so keep it concise. If you want to send a direct reply to someone who has tweeted, the Twitter custom is to preface their name with a @. This will then pop up in their mentions column on Tweetdeck. If they respond directly to you then you will see what they say in your mentions column. If you are following them, and they are following you, you can also send them a direct message.
So if you are not on Twitter get to it – it really does add a new and exciting dimension to watching high profile TV events.
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