You can "Twitter" Friday's presidential debate on your cell phone. You can watch live streaming video of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain jousting about Iraq or Wall Street -- and then rewind it. You will even find searchable clips of the event online.

So what's not to like about this year's long-awaited face-to-face meeting between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama at the University of Mississippi on Friday?

There's a lot to be unhappy about, actually -- if you're Andrew Raseij or any of the other bloggers, techheads and "new media" advocates for a more Internet-friendly presidential debate.

This year's format for the three debates has been touted by the Commission on Presidential Debates as a "historic breakthrough" -- mainly because it allows the candidates to actually address each other. While the first and third debates follow a traditional model, with a moderator asking the questions, the second will feature a town hall format, complete with the candidates on directors' chairs taking questions from both the audience and Internet users who log onto MyDebates.org.

Some private entities are also jumping in with their own bells and whistles. CurrentTV.com, a Web-based television service, will be using "Twitter" technology to allow voters to send "tweets" -- short text messages of 140 characters or less -- throughout the debates that can be viewed online or on mobile devices.

But Mr. Raseij -- a founder of TechPresident.com, which covers how the presidential debates use the Web -- remains underwhelmed.

This year's format, he said, "is really a step backward from the innovations we saw during the primaries," he said. Gone are the real-time "feedback loops" from Internet users that helped shape debate questions as they were taking place, and gone are the unfiltered questions, screened for topic but not content.

"The commission is sprinkling Internet stardust on itself hoping to placate the legions of Internet activists who know that the debates could be made better if the Internet was fully embraced instead of tangentially," said Mr. Rasiej.

It's a far cry from the first-ever televised debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, which will mark its 48th anniversary on Friday. It's even a far cry from this year's primaries.

In the MTV debate, for example, questions from the audience were always unfiltered, noted Michael Connery, of FutureMajority.com, a blog that tracks young voters' involvement in progressive politics.

During that dialogue, the Internet audience was polled for a response and could rate answers six different ways, with results viewable by the live audience, the moderators and the candidates. The moderators then used the feedback as a guide for follow-up questions.

"It was that feedback loop which forced the candidates out of their talking points and into a real conversation," said Mr. Connery. "That unfiltered reaction between the candidates and the public is what made the [MTV debate] interesting and informative."

Then there was 10Questions.com, created by TechPresident.com in partnership with the New York Times and MSNBC, which allowed voters to submit questions online -- on Yahoo, MySpace and You Tube. The top 10 questions were then forwarded to the candidates, who were given six weeks to respond on video.

That approach may not be a debate-as-event, with both candidates in the same room, under pressure, but it was just as useful and important, Mr. Rasiej said, "given that we have, in the past, picked presidents based on 60-second answers that they give on national television."

"Video streaming? That's like, so year 2000," added Mr. Connery. "How about greater, unfiltered interaction between the candidates and the audience? Web 2.0 is about social media, meaning we talk to each other, not at each other."

The choice to go with a traditional televised format with a moderator vetting questions could also been the product of an unusually time-crunched general election -- where there is more for a candidate to lose.

"I think candidates were more willing to take risks during the primaries," said Mr. Connery, "but now both campaigns are more cautious."

Last year's primary debates may have more fully embraced Web 2.0 technology -- a general term for the expanding and evolving role of the Internet -- but they didn't always mean voters came away more well-informed.

"If we look back at the YouTube debates of the primaries, many of the questions became quite silly," recalled Benjamin Bates, a professor of communication studies at Ohio University. "You had someone dressing up as a polar bear to ask about global warming, for example."

Unfiltered questions, moreover, not only raise the risk of slanderous or obscene questions, there's the Internet audience itself -- mostly young, affluent, white.

"It's a very small, self-selected audience of people who have access to a computer, moreover of people willing to use two or more media at the same time," he added. "We may be excluding grandma and grandpa or the person who works in a blue collar job who doesn't know how or doesn't have the time to give feedback. You've got all kinds of people being excluded from this cutting-edge technology."

Indeed, 125,000 people participated in the 10questions.com debate, compared to the untold millions who will tune in on Friday. Moreover, while a number of candidates answered the questions, Mr. McCain, Sen. Hillary Clinton and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee didn't.

Why?

"For some candidates, if it's not TV they don't pay attention," said Mr. Rasief. "It's sad, though, that an American presidential debate in the 21st century is still using a technology that became obsolete in the 20th century to pick our presidential candidates, given the abundant possibilities for citizen participation on the Internet."

In the end, though, the debate over debates always boils down to a question of ownership -- of who gets to ask the questions. And four years from now, a new generation of voters who grew up with the Internet are going to demand that they get a say in that decision, say bloggers.

"These young voters are simply going to expect a greater level of participation -- unfiltered by network anchorpeople. They're not necessarily going to want to turn on the television and watch Wolf Blitzer ask their questions for them," said Mr. Connery. "Those days are fast disappearing."