Hello and a belated Happy New Year to you all. What better way to kick off the blog in ‘09 than with what is surely already one of the biggest news stories of the year, the inauguration of Barack Obama as US president.
Social media played its own leading role as Obama was sworn in, with extensive internet coverage via live video streams, blogs, social networks such as Facebook and micro blogging sites such as Twitter. The latter surpassed fellow social media site Digg for the first time since its launch, with five times the average number of Twitter messages, or “tweets,” per second.
Over 7.7m people watched video streams simultaneously, according to the Associated Press, in what is potentially the most widely covered breaking news event on the internet in history.
See below for a round-up of activity on key social media sites:
The offical inauguration blog, www.pic2009.org, contained real-time updates from staff throughout the day. US citizens could also submit photos, videos, quotes, links and blogs to the site, with the chance to appear in the official inauguration book.
Microblogging site Twitter set up the official presidential Twitter stream @obamainaugural.Current TV, the user-generated TV network co-founded by Al Gore, combined a live-stream of the event with "tweets." Messages from viewers played at the bottom of both Current's broadcast and webcast.
Photo sharing site Flickr created a special Inauguration 2009 group with members adding their photos throughout the day.
Meanwhile on Facebook users could friend "Barack Obama Inauguration" and send a glass of champagne to friends in the US using the Real Drinks application. The social networking site also partnered with CNN to allow members watching the event on CNN.com to sign in and update their status alongside the video stream, all in all resulting in over one million inauguration-related status updates.
- Sam
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