User-generated innovation

One of the unusual characteristics of a caucus versus a traditional vote is that everyone who attended knows the outcome. Yet traditional media has rarely reported these outcomes, waiting instead for official
results.

That type of information embargo is impossible anymore, thanks to the ubiquity of user-generated content creators on the web.

Witness the information flow coming out of Maine today, with near-real time results being put up on a Google map:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&om=0&msa=0&msid=108855644820400443340.000445d3794716293aa9b

It'll be interesting to compare these informal results to the real deal one they're announced. If they're even close, it'll be a major ground-shift on how this stuff can be reported.