Twitter to take a bigger role in next Democractic debate

The company has teamed up with CBS to provide insights, analytics and questions from its users

When political debate moderators on television first started taking questions from Twitter users, that seemed odd to me. After all, most people are pretty uninformed, it's sad to say. If you're like, you'd prefer not to hear the noise.   

If you're not like me, you're in for a treat. Those type of questions are not going away anytime soon. In fact, you should get ready for even more of them now that Twitter announced it's partnered up with CBS News for the next Democratic debate.

That means more Twitter integration with CBSN, CBS's digital network. CBS will use Twitter's curator tools to measure "changing responses to what viewers will see on the screen," David Rhodes, CBS News President, said in a statement.

What CBS will do with that information isn't really clear. So if someone on the CBS team brings up Hillary's "damn e-mails" and Twitter users hate that, then what? They won't ask another question about that topic? Or are they simply going to show viewers at home what those on Twitter are thinking and saying?

There will also be an official hashtag, #DemDebate, plus Twitter is going to be providing an official list of all current candidates, which can be viewed here.

Twitter will also provide CBS News with real-time data and insights, though what kind of data and insights Twitter will be providing wasn't specified. VatorNews has reached out to Twitter to find out and we will update this story if we learn more.

Twitter is no stranger to getting involved with politics. Earlier this year it added capabilities for users to donate directly to their candidate of choice by using Square Cash. New CEO Jack Dorsey also recently hinted that the company would be bringing back "Politwoops," the tool that tracked deleted (i.e., embarrassing) tweets made by politicians.

Twitter had effectively taken it down in June, when it took away the Sunlight Foundation's access to its developer AP. Now that Dorsey is actively couring developers, Politwoops may live again.

Deeper media partnerships

This development is also a good sign for Twitter in terms of its media partnerships, which have become a focal point for the company as it seeks to increase revenue, despite a stagnant userbase.

Twitter benefits greatly from deepening those partnerships, which help the company bring in more advertising without having to worry about gaining more users. Earlier this year, for example. the social media company revealed its plans to sell advertisements within the streams of tweets that appear on apps and websites from other publishers.

Twitter has also been giving its media partnerships greater tools to spread their message. launched Curator, a new tool for media partners to search, filter and curate Twitter for the content that they want to then displayed on their website, mobile app or even on TV. 

With it,  publishers can use it to create complex keyword and hashtag queries to easily uncover streams of high quality Tweets. Those queries can then refined be refined even further, with options to search by follower counts, location, languages and more. From these search, publishers will create their collections, which they will then be able to display. It's all about giving media partners the ability to deliver the best possible content.

More recently Twitter debuted Moments, previously called "Project Lightening," as a feature that is designed to curate content by aggregating Tweets and photos from live events and breaking-news situations.

They will be assembled by Twitter's creation team, while some of Twitter's media partners, including Bleacher Report, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Fox News, Getty Images, Mashable, MLB, NASA, New York Times, Vogue and the Washington Post, will also make their own. That team is going to be headed by former New York Times editor Marcus Mabry.

As for the debate itself, one thing I can say for almost certain is that, Twitter or no Twitter, it is going to take a lot to make this thing interesting. The last Democratic debate was a bit of a snoozefest, and now that nearly half the candidates have dropped out (so long Jim Webb!; nice to have met you that one time, Lincoln Chafee!) and Biden is officially not running it might be even worse this time around.

In order to get through I might just have to spend the entire debate fantasising about Larry David showing up to do his Bernie Sanders impersonation from Saturday Night Live.

The debate is taking place at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa on November 14.

(Image source: nypost.com)