What Did Voters Google During The Last Presidential Debate?, TechCrunch.

The most popular search terms during the last debate on Wednesday included “Roe v. Wade” and “Joe the Plumber.” But, less predictably, “charter schools” and “school vouchers” also seemed to hit a nerve. Or at least people wanted to learn more about them. When the candidates talked about a “litmus test” for nominating Supreme Court Justices that too sent people to their keyboards.

Joe The Plumber, The Presidential Debates & Search, Search Engine Land.

Anyone watching tonight’s US Presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama heard both candidates speak directly to “Joe The Plumber” several times. No, it’s not a fictional Joe. No, it’s not Sarah Palin’s Joe Six Pack. He’s a real person that Obama spoke to earlier this past weekend about economic concerns and taxation. But if you’re turning to search engines to find more about him, as many are, there are a lot of surprises along the way.

New Ad: Lies and Sighs.

Dishonorable Ifill, National Review Online.

It's interesting that energy, Palin's signature issue, never came up in the form of a question; she mentioned it in relation to questions about climate change and carbon emissions. As Ace noted, it's interesting that abortion never came up, nor guns. Nothing on earmarks, government waste, or much on the budget.

Congress Gets Closer to Forcing a Broadband Census, GigaOM. 

The Senate on Friday passed a bill aimed at improving information about broadband competitiveness — or lack thereof. Following similar legislation that passed the House last fall, the Broadband Data Improvement Act act was passed in the Senate. Now the two sides must hash out a compromise bill and send it to the president.

Liberals, conservatives ask for Internet-friendly debates, CNET

What can liberal commentator Arianna Huffington and Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich agree on? At the very least, that the presidential debates should be more Internet-friendly.

Following in the deep footprints of YouTube-CNN, MySpace-MTV, and 10Questions.com-NY Times Editorial Board, Facebook has partnered with media partner ABC News and have announced a series of debates to take place in January before the New Hampshire primary.

Very few details are known about the debate(s) including format and whether facebook will use its video app to encourage user-generated questions from its massive community for the candidates (if they participate), but here's what we do know:

ABC News and Facebook announced this morning that they will join forces during the presidential campaign -- and that one of their first major ventures will be back-to-back debates three days before the New Hampshire primary.

The partnership will combine the technology of the ubiquitous social networking site with ABC's coverage, which will be directly posted to Facebook, whose 55 million members will soon be able to discuss the campaign through a new Debate Groups tool accessed by putting "U.S. Politics" in the search field.

The collaboration will be in play for the Jan. 5 debates being sponsored by ABC and WMUR at St. Anselm College in Manchester.

"The goal is to extend the debate from being a one-hour session that happens on television to a dialogue that can take place before, after, and now during the debate between voters," Dan Rose, Facebook's vice president of business development, told ABC News.com.

The candidates have pages on Facebook, seeking support among younger voters who typically show up in smaller numbers on election day.

Given CNN's debacle of the GOP's YouTube debate, I doubt any Republican campaign will be jumping up and down to participate (save the lower-tier candidates), unless Facebook and ABC News enforce some sort of content-balance.

We look forward to watching this develop over the next month or so.

(My only hope is that I don't receive a press release announcing a debate being offered by the fictional Friendster-[insert declining media partner here] partnership.)

Via YouTube user, pudgenet:

Talent.

On a related note, I'll be heading down to Florida for the YouTube/CNN debate. Make sure you check in to TechRepublican on November 28 for some live-blogging.

One thing is clear, if John McCain is really going to make the move to be the comeback kid, he's going to have to fight hard, play smart, and hit a few homeruns before the season is up. And perhaps just as important to actually making those great plays is to ensure that as many people see it as possible.

That's just what his modern media team headed up by Patrick Hynes did last night when McCain absolutely nailed a line which included three great buzz words: Woodstock + Hillary Clinton, + Earmarks. And in a subtle but appropriate way that only John McCain could do, he reminded the audience of his experience as a POW in Vietnam. He received a standing ovation from the entire crowd and clearly scored the "line of the night."

Personally, I missed it due to being at a dinner with friends. But fortunately the buzz was already starting among the blackberry crowd and then I found this pretty YouTube link sent around to bloggers from Patrick just staring at me, taunting me for a click:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TNEHMjZ6Pqs

But that's not all Team McCain did. In fact, they clearly realized that McCain had hit a homerun that they needed to capitalize on so their email team whipped up this message late last night:

Dear David,

As two recent polls have shown over the past week, John McCain is the only conservative Republican in this race who can beat Hillary Clinton. During tonight's Fox News debate in Orlando, John McCain told the American people why. He won tonight's debate, he'll win the nomination, he'll beat Hillary Clinton and be the next President of the United States. Even his opponents couldn't help giving him a standing ovation tonight.

Please click here to see why John McCain will beat Hillary Clinton and then help us by making an immediate contribution to the campaign. John McCain is picking up momentum, but we need your continued help tonight to keep it moving.

Thank you for your continued support of John McCain.

Sincerely,

Rick Davis
Campaign Manager

PS - Please help John McCain win the nomination and defeat Hillary Clinton by making an immediate contribution tonight.

If John McCain is going to make a comeback, and some recent polling shows there might be an opening, he's going to have to continue to make smart plays like this when it counts.

The first people-powered debate hub has launched. It's called 10Questions.com.

The platform embraces technology to give you and me, citizens, the opportunity to submit a question to all Presidential candidates (Red and Blue) using any video distribution method we choose (e.g., YouTube, MySpace video, blip.tv, etc.).

Here's a familiar face to help explain the site:

Need more? From the About section:

Unlike television debates, the 10Questions Presidential Forum makes full use of the web's potential to expand participation in politics. Everyone has an opportunity to ask a question, and to rally support for their question being in the top ten. The candidates have plenty of time to formulate their answers, and can post in-depth replies. Finally, the community will be able to grade the candidates' answers. With large numbers of people participating, the candidates will have an incentive to pay attention. Who knows, maybe we'll even change the course of the election!

The 10Questions Presidential Forum is being produced by techPresident in cooperation with The New York Times editorial board, with support from MSNBC.com and sponsorship from a large, cross-partisan group of bloggers, online media and organizations.

TechRepublican, along with many other conservative outlets is sponsoring this effort. It is our hope that you will participate in this forum by making a video question, participating in the voting process, and then following up to tell us if you think the Presidential candidates answered the questions.

This is going to be neat.

MySpace and MTV announced yesterday that they are hosting the first of 11 "Presidential Candidate Dialogues" next Thursday in New Hampshire.

The first is with Edwards, but most of the major candidates on both sides -- including Giuliani, Romney, Clinton and Obama -- have already signed on.

The goal of these interactive town halls, held with one candidate at a time, is to empower people, through online media, to ask questions of the candidates and give feedback on their answers in real time. Of course the pessimists argue that this format could also be merely a softball love-fest filled with questions like, "boxers or briefs?"

Regardless of which camp you fall in, I'm pleased to not only see major media outlets like MySpace and MTV trying modern, tip-of-the-spear experiments in participatory democracy, but also Republican candidates stepping up and agreeing to participate on the modern campaign trail.

If you want to participate in the first town hall, you can watch the debate on MySpaceTV or MTV.com on Sept. 27 at noon.

Submit your question to the YouTube debate here.