internet inauguration

It's been a little over a week since the historic inauguration of President Obama, and while it is dying off, I feel like Obama fever is still in full swing. The day of the inauguration, I was a little sad because I wasn't able to watch the entirety to Obama's speech because I had work from 9:20am to 2pm. I had been watching all the preparation news stories, the concerts, interviews all during inauguration weekeknd, so it was upsetting knowing I couldn't watch everything because I would be at work. But then, I realized, I don't need a TV, I just need CNN.com. So at my desk at work, I was able to watch all of the coverage of inauguration day- a replay of the speech, parts of the luncheon (including updates of when Senator Kennedy collapsed), the parade, and preparations for the inaugural balls. And so I kept the live feed window open on my desktop while I was working- and I noticed a Facebook feature on the window too. Then, I noticed that on the broadcast, they were showing how people could get involved in providing comments and updates through Facebook and CNN. Then, I noticed that people were posting their status updates about the inauguration on CNN and CNN.com. Then, I noticed that a few of my friends names were popping up on those updates. It was pretty cool. I started reading the status updates, most of them were positive, "John Doe is OBAMA RAMA" or "Jane Doe never thought this day would come, but I'm glad it did"- and some of them were negative or funny like, "Jack Smith can't believe all this hype for an inexperienced hack" or "Molly Sue hates Aretha Franklin's hat- it's hideous!". And I couldn't stop reading them. It was like we were all sharing a conversation, me and millions of people, and because we were doing so, we made ourselves part of this historic event. Turns out I wasn't the only one that felt the same way. The live feed from CNN gained a record number of people watching online video, so much so that there were waiting rooms to be able to watch online. What a good start to a new age of politics I think.