Reactions From Campaign2008 Followers...

Recently I've been posing questions to the people who follow @Campaign2008 on Twitter - partly to see if anyone would respond to a twitter account that doesn't have a person's name attached to it, but also just to see what the political discussion looks like when you ask questions.

I've tried to avoid playing favorites with the messages I tweet, sticking mainly to fact-based updates with links to stories. As of Tuesday night there were 979 followers, and the number has risen slowly and steadily. Campaign2008's precursor, @SuperTuesday, started simply as a way to drive traffic to the Virtual Vantage Points blog as we live-blogged the "national primary" on February 5. It did well, but as people replied to the make-shift breaking-news feed we created, we quickly learned this was much more than a promotional tool.

Here's a sample of tweets I received when I asked people to "grade" Senator Obama's speech on race in America and compare it to Governor Romney's speech on religion. (I also sent out a link to a recent news story about the Michigan "re-vote" proposal falling apart.)

	henrim @Campaign2008 Mitt didn't face the issue. he said his religion won't affect him as pres. Barack said face the truth and let's deal with it. 09:04 PM March 19, 2008 from TwitterFox in reply to Campaign2008
	bblboy54 @campaign2008 I think Obama's speech yesterday holds valuable content for humans even outside of the campaign - no matter who you root for. 07:05 PM March 19, 2008 from txt in reply to Campaign2008
	RobertP @Campaign2008 No Michigan revote. Awesome, let's be done. 03:57 PM March 19, 2008 from web in reply to Campaign2008
	debdebtig @Campaign2008 Obama's speech was about more then just race and religion. It is definitely going to be a speech that goes down in history. 10:30 AM March 19, 2008 from web in reply to Campaign2008
	jkwatson @Campaign2008 A+ on the speech. It inspired me to give money for the 1st time. 06:03 PM March 18, 2008 from web in reply to Campaign2008
	myrna_minkoff @Campaign2008: A+ in complexity, delivery, lyricism, even-handedness, emotion and truth. The speech was a thing of beauty. 04:21 PM March 18, 2008 from web in reply to Campaign2008
	dean_m @Campaign2008: @acafourek acafourek grades on a curve. B.O.'s speech was more of campaign stump speech 05:27 PM March 18, 2008 from im in reply to Campaign2008
	acafourek @Campaign2008 He didnt seem on his A-game.I listened to audio via CNN and the speech itself just wasnt all that moving. Romney: A- Obama: B 04:28 PM March 18, 2008 from web in reply to Campaign2008
	dean_m @Campaign2008 B. Obama didn't make any JFK speech nor come close to it. Not even close to Romney's. It was justification 01:41 PM March 18, 2008 from im in reply to Campaign2008

It's been fascinating to watch the discussion here, as well as the broader political discussions on politweets and by using tools such as quotably.

Last year I contributed an essay on "The American Political Blogosphere in 2007 and Beyond" to Iain Dale's book, Guide to Political Blogging in the UK 2007-08 and I made two predictions. First, the discussions we saw in 2006 on US political blogs would migrate into other communities, like techies and moms. Second, blogs wouldn't be the only places we'd see these types of discussions online. I specifically mentioned Twitter. While I certainly like being right, I honestly had no idea it would take off to the degree it has.