 desk on SiliconANGLE TV for Thursday, October 4th, 2012. I'm Kristen Folletti. Twitter made history last night in the presidential debate, posting over 10 million tweets about the event, making it the most tweeted about political event. And MetroPCS becomes a thing of the past with a merger of MetroPCS and T-Mobile. Here with his breaking analysis on today's headlines, we're now joined by Silicon Angle founder John Furrier. Good morning John. So let's start with the debate last night, 10 million tweets. How does this new dimension of participation affect Twitter users and other forms of social media? The debate over Obama, Obama kind of looked like a deer in the headlights. But the commentary, the debate kind of highlighted a couple of differences between the two candidates. One is more economically savvy than the other. Mitt Romney clearly has a more fiscal knowledge of economics over Obama. Obama's just hand waving. Obama does put a lot of research into science and the internet, believe it or not. So that's an interesting debate. But the commentary was interesting because it really sparked the crowd and the crowd can be measured for the first time on Twitter. This is really the second presidential debate with Twitter. The first time was, really wasn't really fully baked out. Twitter was still in the early adopter phase, but this is kind of the first election where you see social media so mainstream and highlights, you know, the big data aspects of what we cover. We commented just yesterday that, you know, Larry Ellison doing a big data demo at Oracle Open World, and we have big data that we use at SiliconANGLE and others. This is an example that there is a whole new way of doing things. And this is absolutely a direct example of what I've been saying for years or why Google is under siege with Google search. People aren't searching anymore for information. I watched my young kids and teenagers use the internet yesterday after the debate and my high school senior went right online, was on Twitter, on Facebook, crowdsourcing through his conversation dialogue, his opinion. So he watched the debate, formed an opinion, had some ideas on what he thought about the two candidates, and then went immediately into his social network or his social graph to look at that. So that's one aspect that there's a new user discovery experience out there that absolutely is completely different than Google search. This is marks the end of a generation of how people find things. Yeah, if you want to hunt and peck on Google and Yahoo search, that's certainly the case, but this is absolutely a striking example of how people are discovering and then navigating to content and opinions online. The second thing is that this means that the outlets and the media themselves are under siege because sites like SiliconANGLE and other sites that are emerging are taking the crowd into effect as participants in the production of the media. So users are going to the crowd for production of content and opinions. It's no longer the TV shows who are telling you who won the debate. It used to be that way. Who won the debate? Fox News and CNN said that so-and-so won, not anymore. Now you have a whole new dimension into the politics. This is exactly what we had predicted. That's exactly what we've been talking about and what I've been talking about for many, many years. It's actually happening. The crowd is a factor in changing public opinion and also providing a new user experience. So can you tell us about what types of online venues were used for the debate and also the engagement through these venues, what it was like for users? Yeah, I think what it used to be like, it used to be a classic word of mouth. You watch it on TV. The old way was you watch it on TV or listen to it on radio and you use those visual cues and then they talk about it. You talk about it with people that you could have access to on a physical presence basis in your physical social network or your proximity. And then when TV came along, the big debate was Nixon versus John F. Kennedy in the 60s. And that was like, wow, TV is a medium. It really affected people because if you were watching the visual debate, you obviously saw differences in how you would listen to it on the radio. That is exactly what's happening now with the social networks. There is a real-time component on Twitter, on Facebook, on blogs, leading up to the event, during the event, and after the event. We call this pre-activation and then the event and then afterglow. All three aspects of that event has a social component. It's multi-dimensional. So it's just mainly primarily Twitter and Facebook and some blogs and news. Those three things are integrated together now as one and are actively part of how people are sourcing information. And it totally is validated by last night's presidential debate. Last night, Microsoft also demonstrated some innovative technology using their Xbox Live service for polling viewers. Do you see that as a new trend in using gaming consoles for participation in events? Yeah, I mean, you asked the venues in the last question. I absolutely would classify Xbox as a vehicle. Anything where the users are connected is now a beacon into a global network of signal. So one of the things we always say is extracting the signal from the noise and the Xbox is another great example. I mean, my son probably went on Xbox last night with a lucky number he doesn't play as after he did his homework. And then there within that social graph, that venue, he would communicate his opinions and hopefully source some really good information from the blogosphere and the Twitter sphere. And that's only going to get more powerful and especially highlighted with mobile communications. Anything with an internet connection to a device where you have access to people, you will have an opportunity to provide some signal. Now, conversely, there's noise. So, you know, this is where the new Google will come out. I've always said the next Google, the next company is going to come out of the woodwork and they're going to provide an algorithm to make sense of the noise and make a great user experience. And that's not going to be Google's going to be a new company. Yesterday, T-Mobile USA and Metro PCS announced that they will be combining. So why is this good news for T-Mobile and Metro PCS? Well, it's interesting news, right? On one end you have a small number of players, an oligopoly, if you will, or in some of these markets. But it's also, you know, interesting that you can discuss the economics and the political aspects of that. But at the end of the day, this comes down to pure economic competitive advantage. The world wants faster, better, mobile broadband. And our country is ranked very low relative to the rest of the world in some other emerging countries. We need faster broadband. And what you see with the iPhone 5 is it's funny. I watch people go, oh, my God, the LTE is so fast. It's something like setting screenshots all over Facebook. You know, we saw that right when it launched. I was looking at some of the prototypes of the early LTE stuff. It was amazing. And we knew that was coming down the pike. This is absolutely where the market needs to be. You need to be doing 50 megs up and, you know, 70 megs down as mobile. And this is an opportunity to cut the cord. This is going to put the pressure on the cable companies and the telcos. Broadband wireless now can come out to be that kind of speeds. You don't need wires in the home. That creates more competition. That creates more choice for users. And in order to do that, you've got to have some money. So putting those two together takes two weak players or two relatively strong players, puts them into one powerhouse. So in order to compete with Verizon and AT&T, the capital investments for new towers, new radios, new base stations, new backhaul, connectivity, the significant capital expenditures. And that's what this merger is all about. Look for other assets coming from clear wire on the table. The U.S. government is cleaning up their spectrum strategy. This is an absolute most important area of tech that no one really is picking up on the mainstream, that our spectrum policy and our wireless care is really need to build up faster because the demand is just so massive. With the pairing between T-Mobile and Metro PCS, they're still going to take the overhead name of T-Mobile. So what does that mean for the pairing? It's just a name. I think the branding's fine. At the end of the day, I think people will go with the money, isn't it? And you know, you're going to see better plans. You're going to see more competition. You're going to see speeds. And you're going to see people go, whatever brand loyalty gives them the best connectivity. I think that people can have the ability to get out of these two-year lock-up contracts and switch around between carriers. There is absolutely no brand loyalty. And the only brand loyalty people have is to the signal and the ability to be connected, as we were just highlighting in the Twitter outlet conversation around access to the signal and providing input into these elections and commentary on the social network. So I really don't think the brand name's a big deal or the name, I think whatever it means to combine the assets and get more towers and more signal, more coverage, and more speed. At the end of the day, that's going to tip the scales in terms of branding. Whoever does that will win. We've got a small amount of time left, but Mark Zuckerberg was on the Today Show with Matt Lauer and talked about one billion user mark in Facebook and the disappointing stock launch as well as his recent wedding. What are your thoughts? Well, when he had his wedding, I was walking around the block with my wife and we were noticing all these photographers. We knew something was up and I really don't care about his personal life. The guy's kind of a geek, he wants privacy. But at the end of the day, Facebook right now on the milestone is huge and milestone one billion people. Mark Hopkins were a personal editorial on his blog, risen.com about the privacy and Mark was ranting and doing his normal rant with Scoble and the gatekeepers out there watching the watchdogs of Facebook. But really what this means is it's like Facebook is like one big global nightclub. It's a bar, it's a venue. People go there, they know they're in public and I agree with Mark on this one. Your privacy is no longer. You have to opt in. Now you have a choice. You don't go to the party or you go to the party and once you go in, you're making a contract implicitly to opt in for all your privacy. So that's a choice users make. Now my prediction is that Facebook is on the danger of becoming AOL because what people are gonna realize is like they did with AOL and these walls gardens is that's this pros and cons that this trade-offs and they're gonna either stay or go and Facebook is turning into what the worldwide web would have been if it wasn't a free resource by Tim Berners-Lee. Facebook is actually aggregating all the users sort of comment on Twitter. It says six more million people to go and you've got the whole plan at Facebook. And just that's mind boggling how one company, a private company can own those many users. I think what's gonna happen is there's gonna be some sort of backlash where you're seeing LinkedIn quickly rise up and fill that ground. People are gonna get tired of the party and go to a new party. So I think you're gonna see switching between venues if you will between social networks happen and I think it's just the beginning of that trend. Well, thanks for your time today, John and we'll talk to you soon. Okay, thanks. For information on news of the day and the latest breaking analysis, stay tuned to News Desk right here on SiliconANGLE TV.