I don’t know if I am slightly abnormal or just more politically interested than most, but I generally enjoy watching the presidential debates. I like seeing the candidates put on the hot-seat, even though I know fully-well that they’ve been prepped and have seared scripted responses into their memories. Sometimes they are caught off guard and that’s exciting, but haven’t you ever wondered just how much more cool it would be if the public – i.e. the people electing the candidates – got to toss in a few questions of their own?
In rushes Google to the rescue! As Barack Obama and John McCain were engaged in a war of words Friday evening, Google launched a new tool – Google Moderator – which is aimed at making that possible – if the Commission of Presidential Debates ever decides to go down that path.
Google describes “Moderator” as:
“A free tool which enables communities to submit and vote on questions for debates, presentations and events. This way, the best and most representative questions rise to the top”
Since Moderator’s launch last week, 1,278 people have contributed 578 questions and cast 24,774 votes in the “2008 Presidential Debates” series, which includes questions on a range of categories. What I find most interesting about this is the way that the most popular questions rise to the top, and chances are if a question is getting a lot of votes, it’s something on the mind of many Americans.
Tom Brokaw take note.
