I watched bits and pieces of the Inauguration today and caught much of Obama’s speech on NPR. But I really enjoyed much of the festivities through Twitter and the various reactions, comments and snippets. Apparently I wasn’t the only one enjoying Twitter: Traffic was up five fold.

The breadth of opinions was hilarious. One person would be euphoric about an Obama presidency and the next person would be taking potshots at hope and change. One person loved the inaugural poem and the very next tweet called it a flaming failure.

It was also great to see people’s personal reactions, what lines of speeches/prayers/poems stuck with them, what made them laugh, what made them cry (quite literally).

Twitter clearly can’t replace news coverage (since everyone tweeting was relying on news coverage to make their comments), but it definitely changes the experience. And I suppose that’s true for anything people tweet about, not just news coverage.

Perhaps my own favorite tweet of the day was Lexi’s comment this morning:

Abby: “Lexi, today is the inauguration.”
Lexi: “Yay!”
Abby: “Do you know who’s going to be president today?”
Lexi: “Me, me, me!”

Followed closely by Tim’s geeky Battlestar Galactica reference.

Things I learned via Twitter:

• What looked like Obama flubbing the oath was actually Chief Justice John Roberts flubbing it.
• This interesting chart of presidential approval ratings. Lots of interesting questions there, of course it only reflects fickle public opinion.
• How many presidential assassination attempts there have been. Yikes. Some are lame and bizarre, but it’s a long list. Johnson and Eisenhower were the only modern presidents someone didn’t try to kill.