Twitter amplifies, drums up interest in Philippine vice-presidential debate

While I was online last Sunday (March 21, 2010), something interesting happened: my Twitter feed was suddenly bombarded with messages about the ongoing Philippine vice-presidential debate on ABS-CBN. #harapan, as the televised debate was called (loosely translated as “face to face”), swiftly became the sixth trending topic on Twitter.

My former neighbour @jefftagle proclaimed it to be more exciting than the Pacquiao-Clottey boxing match and that should already say something about the intensity of the debate and the attention it attracted. Whenever Manny Pacquiao fights, expect every Filipino to be glued to the TV set, radio, or cinema screen. Expect his opponent to be character assassinated in good fun on Facebook and Twitter. In contrast, political debates usually only draw the same highly-charged reaction from a particular socio-economic bubble…until the Harapan debate.

Harapan was the marriage of traditional media and social media networks at its best and it benefited a developing country. Here’s how it happened.