• Wired, Monday, September 29, 2008 10 AM

Current TV, the cable television network co-founded by vice president Al Gore, melded a traditional televised presidential debate format with Twitter technology, incorporating viewers' real-time reactions into the broadcast.

Current wrote software that fed filtered Twitter commentary to television screens. The commentary floated on top of the television images of the debate on Friday. At times, the two-liners floating at the bottom of the screen could be distracting, but the format added a much-needed face-lift to a shopworn regime that often felt wooden and rehearsed."

Instead of seeing only the candidates, the audience also saw simultaneous feedback, "a moment-to-moment assessment of how the candidates were performing as filtered through the minds of the group." But one unimpressed observer notes, "It was just a bunch of young people making shallow comments."

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