We have seen several experiments in old media/new media debate format fusion, and we will probably see more before the election. But last Saturday’s ABC/Facebook mash-up of a televised debate and an online chatfest occurred at a special moment in the presidential contest. In spots like this, tightly suspended between two crucial primaries, with large segments of both parties’ New Hampshire electorates undecided and the candidates’ standings in serious flux, public opinion was arguably at an apex of influence. Pollsters Mark Mellman and Michael Bloomfield recently confirmed through survey data how important word of mouth can be in affecting vote choices. As they wrote: “What people say to one another can be as potent as what TV advertisements try to make them think.” Thanks to the Internet, ABC and Facebook had a chance to move this word of mouth affect from the offline world to the online by creating an interactive environment for viewers of the televised debate. They knew it, too. Dan Rose of Facebook told Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, “The goal here is to get a large number of people engaged.”

They sort of did, although the motives of the collaborators were clearly not altogether altruistic: it certainly allowed for nice symbiotic marketing strategy whereby ABC got to look hip for the younger set and get some serious Facebook space. Facebook got some free advertising on ABC to a constituency that it might not typically reach.

Nonetheless, there were some salutary aspects of the experiment. At the Web page dedicated to the debates, a “soundboard” scrolled by at a swift and steady rate with the first sentences of comments by Facebook users, which by and large were well-informed and intelligent, creating an interesting collective stream of consciousness. The social networking company posted more than 114,000 such opinions during the East and West Coast broadcasts. This was not only the transcript of a proto-dialogue among voters, but also potential openings to genuine online dialogues: although it was not advertised, if you were a Facebook member (and you could have enrolled in the time it took a windy candidate to answer a question), you could click on the name of a commenter and leave a message for him or her. It would be seen by other members of the commenter’s online social circle, or “grid” as Facebook calls it. And then a conversation about the debates, and the elections, could begin.

The same opportunity was present in the “debate group” discussion boards keyed to the candidate debates. On January 7, 2008, the most popular group debate—organized around the question, “Based on the debate, do you think a Democratic President could keep America safe from foreign threats?”—had attracted more than 36,600 responses.

If you participated, your word would have gone forth, and maybe back and forth with other debate watchers, and best of all, maybe back and forth and outward to members not already tuned into the debate and the Web page. Facebook’s discussion infrastructure made it possible for the 18 million self-identified U.S. adult Facebook members not living in New Hampshire to communicate with the 92,950 members (9.4 percent of the state’s adult population) eligible to vote in the New Hampshire primaries today. That kind of discussion could compensate in a small way for the front-loaded distortions of the primary process, where expensive advertising by the most well-financed campaigns and outside organizations can dominate.

So there was potential for a “giant conversation,” as Diane Sawyer called it on the broadcast. More than one million people activated the Facebook application, we were told. But during the debate, ABC gave the Facebook connections about as much time and seriousness as a couple of advertisements—perfunctory invitations to participate. No Facebook.com icon was visible during the debate, much less a zipper line of excerpted comments to demonstrate that the public was able to play its part in the decision-shaping discourse.

And the online arrangements made this a drive-by conversation at best. Moments after hearing McCain skewer Romney, for example, if you wanted to see what the comments were, you couldn’t: no search function for the soundboard, and no such topic for the debate group. And the analytic summaries focused on the largely meaningless self-selected poll questions, instead of on the dialogue. With very little effort, Facebook could have provided tag clouds: word-filled boxes in which the size of the words correspond to the frequency with which they are uttered, a window into what people are talking about and in what terms. Finally, in keeping with the sad custom of corporate-sponsored debates, there were no opportunities or even cues for participants to move beyond discussion, join a campaign, vote, or take the next step into more concrete political participation in some other way.

A well-constructed format would have made us all smarter, and the presidential selection process a little fairer. Maybe we’ll get that next time.

Michael Cornfield is Vice-President of Research and Media Strategy at 720 Strategies. Tova Andrea Wang is a Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation.