140: The 2008 election's other magic number

'A great satire'
Shortly after Sen. John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick, a new account popped up: FakeSarahPalin, one of many parodies of public personae on Twitter. With thousands more followers than the official McCain account, FakeSarahPalin tweets musings such as “Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only smart person left on earth.” After establishing itself as a caricature of the VP candidate, the anonymous FakeSarahPalin writer (or writers) asked its 7,600-plus followers in a tweet to donate to the Obama campaign, but clarified it wasn't associated with either candidate. Normal head-in-the-clouds, satirical tweets returned after that, with questions like "Why are we so worried about Borders in Mexico? USE EL AMAZON-O DOT-COM-O. jeesh.”

Deal, the Salt Lake City twitterer, admitted he wasn’t sure which he had been looking forward to more on the night of the Palin-Joe Biden face-off: watching the debate, or reading the fake Palin Twitter account as the debate happened.

“It's a great satire for what's being mirrored in reality," he said. Humor is a critical element of Twitter for Deal: “I sort of imagine it as the Internet equivalent of the comedy writer room. How can I make people laugh?”

But it’s not all humor. Twitter has cost one aide his job: When a blogger who worked on the McCain campaign tweeted about a YouTube video linking Obama to Rev. Jeremiah Wright last March, the campaign suspended him.

Heated tweets for a vocal McCain supporter
Beth Varela, a Keaau, Hawaii resident joined Twitter about three months ago in the hopes that it would help leverage her online business. Instead, the 47-year-old jewelry seller who is voting for McCain found herself more interested in the political discourse on the site.

“I'm not a fan of Obama at all,” Varela said. And she's not afraid to tweet it, either: Even after receiving hate e-mails from twitterers she has infuriated, she said, “I can't keep my mouth shut!”

Reich, the new media expert, believes reporters are over-eager to rely on Twitter as a source for stories. “It's not reflective of the broad population. If you asked Joe the Plumber if he twittered, I don't think he even knows what Twitter is.”

When asked what is wrong with Twitter, co-founder Stone mentioned the site's search feature. “We really don't do a good job exposing the relevance of this tool to people in their lives. If people look at search.twitter.com, which isn't really integrated into the main Twitter experience, they get more relevant stuff to look at. It's really hard to demonstrate that the next time a big shared event like an earthquake or a flood or your favorite TV show happens, you're going to want to connect with people in real time. I think we have a lot more work to do to get the user experience right.”

Neither the Obama nor the McCain press offices responded to msnbc.com's requests for comment this story (not even in 140 characters or less).

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