Was Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration a big day for Web video? Yes. Was it a record day? No one knows. That’s because Web video metrics, which are supposed to be much more precise than television’s, are still pretty raw.
Barack Obama’s move into the White House meant different things for different people. For Elevation Partners head Roger McNamee, it meant he could get a haircut.
There was only one force powerful enough to dampen the Internet’s hunger for all things Obama yesterday: Barack Obama himself.
Or, more precisely, his inauguration speech.
YouTube may have been the only big Web site that didn’t provide a live stream of Barack Obama’s inauguration. But its users are rectifying this as we speak: They’re currently uploading clips of the ceremony to the site at a staggering pace.
It will be nearly impossible to find a place that will not be showing Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony live today. But: If for some reason you find yourself trapped in a room that doesn’t have a monitor but does have Wi-Fi access, and you have an iPhone, you may still be able to watch the events in real time.
The Obama presidency-to-be has already provided a boost for media companies. So it will be nearly impossible to boot up your browser and not end up watching a live stream of the pomp and circumstance–we’ll even have coverage at All Things Digital! But here’s a guide, just in case your online venue of choice gets the hiccups.
Check out this interesting product tweak from YouTube: the ability to download clips from the video site to your hard drive. Until now, YouTube has required users to watch its video on the Internet. But now you can watch the President-elect ride the train while you’re…riding the train.
This may make it easier for Barack Obama to kick his well-publicized BlackBerry addiction: News that Verizon employees have been snooping through his phone records. The phone company says the handset in question is a “simple flip-phone,” and not a Berry, and that it has been inactive for several months. But the startling public admission should be enough to convince Obama, if he needed any more prompting, that he’s going to have to give up his prized gadget.
Remember last week? When, in the aftermath of a historic presidential election, things were so giddy it seemed that even newspapers might be valuable again–at least as collector’s items? Well, that’s over.
That was fast.
The recent resurgence of “Saturday Night Live,” spurred by Republican VP candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin and her comic doppelgänger, Tina Fey, may already be over.
How do I know? Well, there’s the gut check–I watched most of Saturday’s show, which didn’t feature Palin or Fey, and it was a snoozer (the absence of new mom Amy Poehler probably didn’t help either).
But we can also gauge the reaction of Internet users, thanks to the good folks at TubeMogul, a small start-up that specializes in tracking Web video views.
And the results are not so good.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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