In last night's back-to-back Republican and Democratic Facebook/ABC debates in New Hampshire, the stakes were high, the chairs were comfy, and Facebook was jammin’. Too bad the Facebook part did little to affect the debate.

The format was like a MySpace/MTV dialogue-lite. Viewers at home watched the two debates and answered poll questions on Facebook’s politics page, co-sponsored by ABC News, which aired the debates nationally. Viewers could answer questions like, “Is tonight’s debate giving you a better sense of whom will vote for?” and post their responses to the debate — in the same format as the ubiquitous Facebook status — in the sidebar. These debate-updates refreshed in real time, with no need to reload your browser page. We were thus treated to an abundance of statuses like “X is thinking wse should do away with the two party system and just vote for the person we want” or “X is thinking Mitt Romney is going to bite the dust” or “X is thinking that their aren’t really any desirable presidential candidates… they all seem like dirty politicians… that being said id vote for huckabee.”

The Facebook politics page also featured an “ABC News Political Reporter Mini-Feed” below the polls, so users could keep on top of what the ABC reporters were up to. Riveting. I’m sure Facebook users just couldn’t wait to read the new message that Z. Byron posted on his FunWall.

I liked the ability to interact with other viewers as we all watched the debate, and that aspect of the format improved on the MySpace/MTV dialogues, which encouraged viewers to vote on whether the candidates had answered the questions and whether they agreed with those answers, but didn’t give viewers the chance to interact with each other.

But those dialogues did allow viewers to participate in the actual forum — they could send in questions via IM or email, and the producers made sure that a good number of the questions sent in were asked. I attended the dialogue with John McCain and as far as I could tell, the producers made a point not to influence the questions being asked by the students in attendance, and the event was loosely structured to ensure that certain themes were covered.

Mike Connery and I seem to be in agreement about the superior format of the MySpace/MTV events.

But that wasn’t to be last night. The online component served as nothing more than a backchannel for viewers at home. A fun backchannel, to be sure, but it was more of a strategy to get the suddenly coveted youth voters to watch ABC than to get them involved with the debate.

The sole questioner in the first half was Charlie Gibson, he of the lowered reading glasses and deadly serious expression. He was joined in the second half Scott Spradling, the political director of the Manchester ABC affiliate. Both moderators kept the debate interesting but civil, and gave the candidates more room to question each other than previous debates. That was in part because there were fewer candidates on stage for both parties (thanks in part to the unfair exclusion of Dennis Kucinich), and the moderators made a point of not butting in and complaining of time constraints.

This might be petty, but I enjoyed seeing the candidates sitting down in swiveling office chairs. They seemed more relaxed. Some took advantage of the comfort and rocking back and forth or shuffling from side to side while others stayed perfectly still. It helped get the candidates in the zone, and it was fun to try and read their body language. I’m thinking that, unfortunately, the lo-fi technology of the chairs did more to influence the debate than the more sophisticated polling and chattering happening on the web.