Search pauses, social surges as Obama speaks

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States held the world’s attention like few other events. It was one of those moments that people will always remember where they were.

An estimated two million people were in the place where President Obama was sworn in, Washington DC.

When Obama began his speech two very dramatic trends happened in search and social: search volumes overall dropped in the US while social media activity focussed on the event rose.

Prior to the speech and immeidately afterwards, Google says it saw search volumes rising, with terms like live inauguration coverage and listen to inauguration live. Interestingly, only the Timesonline in the UK had antcipated these volumes and bought paid search ads alongside them to pull in users to its coverage of the event.

But when President O started speaking this happened:

Image: The number of searches on Google in the US on January 20th 2009

Meanwhile, according to stats released by Facebook, which was running an excellent Facebook Connect tie-up with CNN’s live coverage the number of status updates about the event doubled during the first minute of his speech. Mashable has the numbers:

1. 600,000 status updates posted through the CNN.com Live Facebook feed

2. Facebook averaged 4,000 status updates per minute during the broadcast

3. 8,500 status updates were posted during the first minute of Obama’s speech

4. “Millions” of people logged into Facebook during the broadcast

This online mass behaviour switches nicely illustrates the Yin & Yang, Search and Social view we’re thinking about a lot at iCrossing. Google helps people find the content, Facebook (and a thousand other platforms) helps them make sense of it, make the most of it, share the experience.

On that last point, yesterday was all the richer an experience for my being able to hear about friends preparations and emotioins in the build up to the inauguration, and for being able to flit through many other people’s perspectives, thoughts and creative efforts after it. And that was before we even got to the news analysis.

Media mainstream, big, broadcast media, did a great job of providing raw feeds of the event, but it came alive in the social spaces around it.

: : If you’re after more social media / inauguration goodies, I’ve posted my personal favourites on Open.