Obama Inauguration Rocks the Web

As the early numbers pour in, the inauguration of President Barack Obama is shaping up to be a Web video event like no other. On Jan. 20 CNN.com Live served more than 18.8 million live video streams globally from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. EST, at which time Obama had been sworn in and had delivered his inaugural address. According to CNN's internal data, that figure is more than triple the previous record of 5.3 million live streams set on Election Day last year, which at the time was record-shattering. Though total audience numbers are not yet available, CNN.com Live, which allowed users to select between four different live cameras during the historic inauguration, served a whopping 1.3 million concurrent live streams just before Obama's address. The social side of the Web is also benefiting from the surge of interest in Obama's first day on the job. Facebook, which partnered with CNN.com to enable viewers to comment on the day's events using their Facebook status tool, tracked 600,000 such updates as of 1:15 EST, an average of 4,000 per minute during the live Web broadcast. In fact, at the very minute Obama began his speech, Facebook recorded 8,500 updates. During Tuesday's inauguration of President Barack Obama, people curious about unfamiliar references used Google to supply the footnotes for the ceremony. The phenomenon was visible on Google Trends, a service that shows which search terms are rapidly rising in use.