Inauguration Most-Watched Online Event Ever

I had Tuesday’s inauguration broadcasting on all three TVs – my 42” 1080P Vizio with NBC in HD and it looked gorgeous — and one radio in my house so as not to miss a minute, but according to CNN and Akamai, nearly 8 million office-bound workers watched online. That figure likely won the inauguration of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, the title of most-watched online event yet.

Over the course of the day, “nearly 27 million people watched streaming video on CNN.com. … That’s more than five times the site’s previous record, set on Election Day, when 5.3 million people watched streaming video of the day’s events,” according to CNN’s story on Tuesday’s online viewing.

Other sites that people sought out to watch the inaugural were NYTimes.com and CBSNews.com. While that’s a victory for online news sites, it also was a big day for online advertising, something that’s just coming into its own.

 And I know from personal experience that Facebook and Twitter saw a lot of action on Tuesday. I know some people get annoyed about constant status updates and tweets and twitters – and at least one told me so — but I still think it’s incredibly cool to be able to participate in these nationally relevant events as part of a community. I got to see my friends’ pictures from the inauguration and hear about their thoughts and experiences almost as they were happening. If it weren’t for Facebook, I probably wouldn’t even know that many of my friends attended the inauguration – it’s just too hard to stay in that close of touch with everyone.

While it’s great and democratic that people could watch the inauguration online, most sites froze during the day due to too much traffic, according to Keynote Systems and the AP. That lets us know that we still have work to do building our broadband infrastructure. That’s something Obama pointed out during his inauguration speech, so I hope watching the next inauguration online will be a breeze.