What does The New York Times, Fox News and Xbox LIVE all have in common? Starting soon, all three will be able to better inform opinions in the United States’ upcoming Presidential election.
Announced via press release today, soon all Xbox LIVE users will be able to use Microsoft’s Election 2012 Hub to watch live broadcasts of all the debates scheduled for this election cycle, learn where they can vote, read analysis on the issues and where both candidates vying for their vote stand, and enjoy complete Election Day coverage on November 6th.
While Microsoft goes on to talk intimately about the drive behind creating the new hub and what really is the first actual interactive event of it’s kind, we found this to be just as interesting as their patriotic motives:
“He [Brad Smith, Microsoft executive vice president and general counsel] stresses that the upcoming election forums are not isolated events but rather “build on work we’ve been doing for a long time.” And he adds, Microsoft employees will be encouraged to get involved as well, in a variety of ways. “We’re building a foundation for further work we’re going to do, and there will be opportunities for employees to contribute to this.”
A foundation for further work in live real time coverage of events eh? Together with the company’s coverage of the Curiosity’s Mars landing earlier this month and it’s streaming coverage of the 2012 Xbox Media Briefing, we’d say this is definitely a trend we now know we’ll be seeing more of in the future.
