The inauguration looms large on Google and Twitter

20.01.2009
Searches and tweets relating to Barack Obama's inauguration are spiking Tuesday, as the nation tunes into the transfer of presidential power.

Twitter's top ten "trending topics" included nine terms related directly or indirectly to the inauguration. Besides "Inauguration Day" and "President Obama," locations of events featured prominently, as people on site relayed tweets about what they were seeing at the National Mall and Capitol. "Now marching towards the mall in a column of people 100 feet wide and one mile long," . Another he was "feeling kinda sorry for all the people freezing on the Mall."

The trending topic devoted to tweets by "Top Conservatives on Twitter" (#tcot) included some hopeful messages about the incoming administration, but many criticisms as well. "The $120 mill wasted on inaug could have employed 4000 people at $30k per year," . A user who identified himself as Donald Turnbull , "Don't let this day get you down. With hard work and staying true to our principles, We Shall Overcome."

On Google Hot Trends, the list of popular searches generated at just before 9 am did not feature any inauguration-related terms in the top 10, but the top 50 had several, including "obama inauguration time" (#11), inauguration schedule 2009 (#26), "inauguration watch party" (#31), "inauguration schedule january 20" (#35), "inauguration live" (#39), and "barack obama" (#36).

Update: Twitter experienced intermittent outages Tuesday morning in the hours leading up to Barack Obama taking the oath of office. See .