Last Friday Livestation hosted our first instant interactive live chat session with some of the programme producers at Al Jazeera and our viewers during the first Presidential Debate.

While participating in the chat, something new and unexpected happened. I had a glimpse of a sort of collective “live” Wikipedia phenomenon: people in the chat room where not just expressing themselves but they were also policing what Obama and McCain were saying. Live.

As soon as one of them said something that contrasted with some claim made in the press, someone in the audience, as I would expect to be the case “ala wikipedia”, recalled the relevant piece on a newspaper and within 10 seconds the link to the article appeared in the chat.

The case in point was Obama attacking McCain on Iran and saying that the US should sit down with Iranian officials to discuss the situation without precondition. McCain argued that this was wrong; “…and therefore saying, they’ve probably been doing the right thing, because you will sit down across the table from them and that will legitimize their illegal behavior.”.

Obama then pointed out that McCain’s own advisor – Kissinger – said exactly the same thing: “Senator McCain mentioned Henry Kissinger, who’s one of his advisers, who, along with five recent secretaries of state, just said that we should meet with Iran — guess what — without precondition. This is one of your own advisers”.

And here’s the Livestation moment: one of the guys in the chatroom immediately posts the link to the article on ABC News about Kissinger saying just that (article is here).

What’s special about this? It verified the flow of information live. It cleared a doubt I had at that point: who’s misleading? Who’s right?

Knowing straightaway was very useful for me in particular during a debate designed specifically to help electors make up their mind on what to do with their vote.

I mention Wikipedia as it is serves the same “look-up” purpose but in an on-demand/time-shifted way. You hear something, you think “let me check it out on Wikipedia”. What I saw yesterday was a glimpse of the live version of this behaviour.

Another example of this type of Wisdom of the Crowds effect can be found in the popular TV game Who Wants to be a Millionaire when the contestant asks the audience to help with the answer (they always get it right).

If you can tap into the sum the individual knowledge and recollection capabilities of a group of users in real time you have a hugely powerful tool at your disposal: an instant verification tool for live TV.