The Social Media Minute -- '08 Election Special!

As you settle in tomorrow evening with your bucket of chicken and foamy six-pack, you'll want to know which Social Web destinations you should go to to augment your traditional TV viewing enjoyment. In rough order, these are the essential sites and hubs you've got to keep an eye on to get the full election picture.

Twitter Election Channel

If you're the kind of news junkie who just has to know breaking stories before everyone else, here's the place to come. Twitter obliterates TV, radio, blogs, news websites and everyone else when it comes to getting breaking news out fast. If someone pulls down Barack's pants backstage, to reveal that the great man wears hammer & sickle boxer shorts, you'll hear it here first. If John and Sarah get caught making out in the campaign bus en route to Arkansas, the Twitterati will be posting it ahead of anyone else.

The Twitter election channel represents a constant stream of election-theme tweets, and will be absolutely essential viewing over the next 36 hours. It's wild, fast, crazy. Give it a chance, and we guarantee you won't be able to tear your eyes away until the wee small hours tomorrow night. If you're not on Twitter, you don't have to sign up or log in to view the channel.

Friendfeed US Politics Room

Almost as quick and dynamic as Twitter, FriendFeed is a lifestreamer and Social aggregator which has developed into a big global ball of conversation. If you wonder what all the FriendFeed fuss is about, tomorrow night provides you with a great chance to find out.

In the context of election coverage, FriendFeed is kinda like a Twitter with longer tweets and embedded media.
Go to the US Politics room, hit the 'Real-Time' link on the right-hand side, and you will be bombarded with links, tweets, embedded video, opinion, shared pics, angry rants and all the rest… and will get breaking news much faster than the networks will be breaking it.

Like the Twitter Election Channel, you don't have to be a FriendFeed member to follow developments here.

MSNBC Decision Dashboard

MSNBC is about the best mainstream outlet to go to to follow proceedings, and has probably been more even-handed in its overall coverage than certain other mainstream outlets.

You can explore an excellent interactive map to look at popular vote predictions, electoral map predictions, latest poll findings etc., and also drill down into all kinds of campaign statistics like contributions per state or per sector, candidate appearances, demographic breakdown of support and a whole lot more. It's a brilliant piece of work all around.

Elsewhere on the Decision Dashboard you can sign up for mobile alerts, keep an eye on the campaign newsticker, and watch the latest election-related video clips.

Yahoo! has a similar deal, which is also excellent, and where you can also keep track of the most blogged election stories.

Current

Current is probably the coolest place to follow the election, given that you can listen to mad tunes while you watch the world go to hell in a handbasket on election night. Join up with Digg and Twitter at Current to ring in the new era. We're not totally sure how things are going to pan out here, but it's definitely hip. If hip means hip anymore. If hip doesn't mean hip anymore, than this is most definitely not hip. Because whatever it is, it's totally hip.

Social Median Election Channel

Another lifestreaming service, where you can check out rising posts and breaking news. A big advantage of SocialMedian is the sheer amount of stories on the page: check out the 'Rising Stories' and 'Hot Discussions' to see what people are thinking right now,

Who's Going to Win?

Seems like there's no stopping the man from Hawaii, but maybe there's still time for McCain to pull it out of the fire. To find out if he's clawing back some of Obama's lead, RealClearPolitics is the place you want to go. This site aggregates all the most recent polls for the Presidential race and for the Senate race, and links to breaking election stories.

As we all know that the pollsters can be a shady bunch, you might have more faith in a pure money market and what the bookmakers are offering. Intrade Prediction Market has a money 'prediction' market for the presidential election, and you can gauge here just who is likely to prevail. For the record, Obama is currently a 90%+ shoo-in, far as these guys are concerned.

The Social Media Minute -- '08 Election Special!

As you settle in tomorrow evening with your bucket of chicken and foamy six-pack, you'll want to know which Social Web destinations you should go to to augment your traditional TV viewing enjoyment. In rough order, these are the essential sites and hubs you've got to keep an eye on to get the full election picture.\n\n

Twitter Election Channel

\n\nIf you're the kind of news junkie who just has to know breaking stories before everyone else, here's the place to come. Twitter obliterates TV, radio, blogs, news websites and everyone else when it comes to getting breaking news out fast. If someone pulls down Barack's pants backstage, to reveal that the great man wears hammer & sickle boxer shorts, you'll hear it here first. If John and Sarah get caught making out in the campaign bus en route to Arkansas, the Twitterati will be posting it ahead of anyone else.

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