The Last Analoguration

Today, much history was made. Of course, I’m speaking of the induction of a new President of the United States; and the first time a black man has been elected to the highest office in that country. But more than that, there were a few other things that happened.

People around the planet watched the events, streaming live, on their computers; their laptops; their mobile devices; and even, for some of them, on their televisions, albeit digitally time-shifted with a PVR.

Virtually everyone I know plans to revisit todays events, on demand, through YouTube. They’re not alone… CNN.com maxed out their streams at 1.3 millions streams, nearly doubling the previous record of 700,000 simultaneous viewers set a few years ago. 18.8 million viewers logged into the site, again setting new records. While seemingly trivial, it’s most certainly not.

Four years ago, there was no YouTube; Facebook was still being offered only to a handful of college students in the US; had you suggested you were ‘tweeting’ no one would understand, and RSS feeds were only being used by less than 1% of the internet population. Barak Obama, among others, has demonstrated that the fundamental messages of his campaign, and now his presidency, can be more effectively, more efficiently, and more widely delivered than ever before.

At the end of the Bush(43) administration, a number of things will change. Among them is the undeniable truth that these new ways of the fundamental act of communication and public relations has finally supplanted its predecessor in virtually all ways. Social networking, streaming video, and Web 2.0 have all played a pivotal role in this election; one that it couldn’t play four short years ago. Robert Gibbs certainly has his work cut out for him.