Twitter Tracks Iowa Caucas Results

We are definitely heading into a new era.  A while back I heard that fire fighters battling the wild fires in San Diego were using Twitter for status messages.  Now as we head into the election primary’s and caucus’s we are seeing a new facet of twitter and its job as a social networking tool.  I saw a post, “Iowa Twitter Success” where they described how they used Twitter to track the results, much faster than the mainstream media was getting them.

Patrick Ruffini, the post’s author and Twitter organizer got together a list of Twitter’rs to help him out:

Thanks to @podcastmama, @jakebouma, @chrisken, @kevin_s, @yogagirl, @heatherbrie, TechPresident’s very own @mbassik, @rwclark, @stuartma, @timmytims, @scottatdrake, @LostAirman, @nathantwright, @chanzi, @mrswhitsitt

They used Twitter as a voter reporting system, sending in messages of poll and voter polling results from around the state.  Here is the twitter reporting page called iowacaucus.  According to Patrick:

So I’m calling this experiment an unqualified success. This exercise in citizen journalism foretold the result far more quickly than dispatching two dozen stringers to caucus locations throughout Iowa. Post-macaca, predictions abounded of citizens armed with camera phones bringing us live coverage of everything. It hasn’t happened… yet… but we saw a glimpse of the future tonight in Iowa. Perhaps the era of blogs and YouTube is giving way to the age of Twitter and UStream (sorry, can’t help it… disclosure).

What a great use of new technology to report an event that has been taking place for centuries here in our country.  I think he was right in his last quote, this is just a glimpse into the future.  Lets look forward and wonder how Twitter, or the new tool we haven’t see yet will play a role in reporting the election.  No longer will we depend on the big networks to “project” the winners, we will know before they do.