Streaming, Tweeting and Facebooking the Inauguration

For most Americans, the question yesterday wasn’t whether you should watch the inauguration, it was where.

Aside from every TV channel, you could watch live streams online from CBS (on Joost), ABC, CNN, Fox News (on Hulu). Katie Couric covered the post-inaugural events in a web-only cast (sponsored by Audi). There was an official feed from the Presidential Inauguration Committee, an amateur one from Obama Girl on Stickam.com, and everything in between. You could even join a virtual celebration as an avatar of WeeWorld.

One of the most popular places to watch was CNN.com, who did a virtual viewing party with Facebook. You were able to watch together at www.facebook.com/cnn and have a real-time conversation with others simultaneously. This was all done through updates, which also appeared in user’s News Feed. The inauguration prompted more than one million status updates during the event, averaging over 4,000 status updates per hour Tuesday morning and peaking at 8,500 updates every minute while President Obama was giving his speech. As of 11:45 a.m. Eastern time, CNN had served 13.9 million live video streams globally since 6 a.m., according to Mashable.

Meanwhile, Twitter, which prepared for the day by doubling capacity, reported a surge of five times the normal tweets per second (see graph). Overall, Twitter provided some of the best real-time coverage, which was also integrated with Current’s livestreamed coverage on their “Shout Out the Swearing In” show.

This certainly demonstrates the popularity of our new President, but it also provides undeniable proof of new media’s power. Technology can extend a singular event to millions across the world, who can share the experience in real time.