Social media and the 2010 Maryland election
Eyes are on Twitter, Facebook and other websites tonight as the plugged-in track the election. We're taking a look at three interactive widgets that Mashable, an online guide to social media, highlighted earlier in the day, and seeing how they apply to Maryland.The New York Times has a tool to highlight the number of posts related to candidates' Twitter accounts. The middle circle "grows and shrinks based on the total activity happening" around candidates' accounts, including those of O'Malley and Ehrlich, @GovernorOMalley and @Ehrlich4MD respectively. The smaller circles represent tweets to each candidate, from each candidate and "retweets" (reposts of another user's tweet) of candidates' messages.
Twitter Sentiment is helping social media aficionados discover how people are feeling about candidates and the parties in general. Type in any term you'd like to see the climate. As of 5 p.m., about a quarter of tweeters were expressing negativity about the election using our #mdvote hashtag (track it by clicking here).
Additionally, Foursquare launched its "I Voted" site, though we noted that the counts for Baltimore seem to be a bit inaccurate. Through Foursquare, users who "check-in" at a polling place not only show up on it's map, if they type in "I Voted" during the check-in, they get a badge. Here's a look at Baltimore's participation:
