Current and Twitter Rock The First Presidential Debate of Election 2008

Tonight my friends at Current invited me to check out the behind-the-scenes action at their first ever Hack The Debate event where they joined forces with Twitter to provide real-time Twitter updates during Current’s broadcast of the presidential debates.

While at the Current offices we were greeted by special guest Al Gore, who co-founded Current along with Joel Hyatt.

I shot video of Al’s welcome speech where the subject of Twitter came up and he promised that by tomorrow he would be using Twitter. He mentioned that he was normally an early adopter, but had not yet joined Twitter.

Once the debate was under way, I walked over to the Twitter Headquarters, where they were in full swing, making sure that Twitter stayed up and running throughout the night. Based on the numbers they shared with us after the debates, they did an amazing job and are more than ready for election night.

photo gallery: Current & Twitter Hack The Debate

More Coverage:

– GigaOM

– Wired Thread Level

UPDATE: Al Gore is finally on Twitter, you can follow him @algore.

photos by Scott Beale