We’ve always stated how Twitter is a great way to gather data from the masses on certain topics. No one will ever disagree with that. Tonight is the highly anticipated Presidential debates and Twitter is buzzing with colorful commentary from both sides of the race. Twitter has seemingly tapped into the technology from Twitter Search (formerly Summize) and created Election.twitter.com.

The website seemingly uses AJAX to automatically refresh all chatter about Obama, McCain, Biden and Palin. I’ve seen this technology used in other places such as Digg Spy (which I think made it popular) and it really gives a good flow of information without refreshing the browser.

This is good and all, but I’m concerned this is nothing more than a tease.

Twitter impressed a lot of us early in their company’s history by implementing a group feature for SXSW. You followed a certain Twitter user, and all related SXSW tweets were aggregated and shown together. We salivated over this functionality and asked Twitter the inevitable question of when groups will be implemented. The word was “soon”. This is why I’m not getting my hopes up over the really cool election site. I fear it’ll serve as a special Twitter function and won’t be rolled out to users just as groups was. If this is true, it’s really a shame because it’s a really nice feature, sort of like Track was, but I digress. I don’t really participate nor follow political conversations online frankly because the entire arguments are based on lies on top of lies based upon past lies which were founded upon even more lies.

Looking at the data stream at the Twitter election site, it’s obvious, and not surprising, most of the Twitter community is pro-Obama. It’s also sad to see a lot of name calling and generalizations on both sides of the race, but hey, that’s politics. I’m enjoying the use of the technology to highlight this point however. And to Twitter: Stop teasing us with stuff like this and roll it out. It gets old when you get our hopes up and then shatter them with silence.

P.S. If you’re going to particpate in #obamashot and #mccainshot, please make sure you have a designated driver. Thanks.

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• After 4 Months, Has Twitter Improved?
• 10 Days Without Twitter
• My Twitter-Fu is Better Than Yours