Twittering to the future

Dubai: It wasn't just the live televised debate that made history: the online community was a buzz of activity, with politicians, members of the public and the press coming together on the same forums for the first time, on the same topic.

At least three hours before the debate started, the hashtag #leadersdebate appeared on Twitter's top 10 trending topics.

It continued to rise, and by the end of the debate 90 minutes later, was the top trending topic.

Top 10

According to Twitter statistics, 36,483 people were tweeting on the debates, with an average frequency of 29.06 tweets per second, sending a total of 184,396 tweets.

At 9am BST yesterday (Friday), the morning after the debate, it was still in the top 10.

The three parties set up their own social media bases, with live blog and twitter updates constantly refreshing.

Worm poll

Host station ITV also had its own online real-time audience reaction programme ‘The Worm', with 20 undecided voters participating in the worm poll as they watched the debate, along with inputs from ITV correspondents, including Bill Neely.

The online community was also able to vote for who they think performed the best, and a Facebook application on the same page showed live status updates on the debates.