Twitter has become a huge part of the political discourse and has a measurable effect on the views of the talking heads and the press at large, especially DURING the debate.
In the last match-up between Mittens and the President it was obvious to everyone who won the spin before the debate even ended - simply because faithful democrats were complaining about Obama's performance as much as the republicans were bashing it
John Shaffer talks about it here - For millions, the liveliest chatter about Tuesday night's presidential debate will arrive 140 characters at a time - free of pundits in pancake makeup.
With smartphones, tablets and laptops, debate-watchers will log onto Twitter.com and form a nationwide peanut gallery, adding instant context, fact-checking and gags to passive TV-watching.
Last week, 4 million people logged on for the vice presidential debate, sending out their own zingers on Big Bird and malarkey.
From Huffington Post - "I think with Twitter, and the way information now moves, the sense of how the debate is being played out occurs in almost real-time," Jones told The Huffington Post. "In years past, you may have had to wait until the debate concluded."
Another article about live debate tweets The Twitter blog noted that of the 4 million tweets that were sent, 26% were about foreign policy, 21% discussed the economy, and 16% discussed taxes. The moments that inspired the most tweets per minute, according to the blog, were Biden's "Now you're Jack Kennedy?" comment (58,275 tweets per minute) and a Ryan comment on Medicare: "They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar turning Medicare into a piggy bank for Obamacare" (55,540 tweets per minute). Also garnering a large number of tweets per minute was Biden's discussion of the timeline for leaving Afghanistan (54,944), as well as the word "malarkey," which generated 30,000 tweets.
There was a reporter on MSNBC the day after the debate, I can't quite remember which one - I think Lawrence O'donnnel who said he was astounded to see most of the reporters at the debate weren't actually watching it - they were watching their twitter feed.
So I say to all of you spin for the President on twitter tonight and spin hard - your reactions to his performance on twitter and elsewhere on the internet have the ability to change the discussion post debate.