Did you stack?

Last night was an exciting time for Canadian political and technology junkies like me. It was Election Night! In the past I would have simply turned on my TV and flipped between channels to watch the results roll in. Now thanks to the Web, there's way more real time information at my disposal.

So, I "Media Stacked." That is to say I surfed the Web, blogged and watched TV all at the same time. What did I stack?

Not much really...here's the list:

• AliantTV tuned to the CBC and CTV
• A Web browser tab open to Twitter's #CanadaVotes for real time updates
• A second Web browser tab open to The Globe and Mail site for local and national results
• A third Web browser tab open to The National Post's Live Results Webpage

An election law in Canada prevents media outlets from communicating election results before the polls close in most timezones. According to Elections Canada (the independent agency that conducts elections in Canada) - "it's important to ensure the vote results are not known in areas where voting is still underway". So things were very quiet on the mainstream outlets till later in the evening. But that didn't stop Twitter users.

Some of you may be asking - what is Twitter?

Answer - "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length"

Basically it's scrolling list of opinions (good and bad), insight, and news. Last night Twitter was ablaze with tweets skirting the election embargo. I wonder if Elections Canada will investigate? Perhaps, but I think some of the best tweets were sent after all the polls closed. Check out the tweet stream for yourself by clicking here.

But there's more media stacking to be done...a U.S. Presidential Debate takes place this evening and Twitter set up Election 2008 with streams for each party...how cool is that!!!!