About Obama's Inauguration Ceremony

Limelight Networks Reports Record-Breaking Internet Traffic for Today's Inaugural Address:

''Today's inauguration is an example of the global power of the Internet as a platform to unite. Like never before, people from around the world joined together to experience this historic moment,' said Nathan Raciborski, chief technical officer and co-founder, Limelight Networks, Inc. 'Such a powerful, unifying event was exactly what we envisioned eight years ago when we launched our innovative, network-based CDN, and we are pleased that our platform played such a major role in delivering today's ceremony to the world.'"

I was one of the online participants, and I can use my own example to demonstrate the power of this international event: I almost forgot to watch it but luckily was reminded by my TwitterFox messages from Darran in Ireland. Then I logged on to Facebook to view my saved event participation information, figuring out that I should actually go to CNN.com to view the video stream. I did it, and my popped-up screen had a sidebar from Facebook, which allowed me to change my "status" line to share with the world what I am watching. Oh by the way, since I forgot to log off my Facebook page, the new popped-up window automatically recorded my entry and did not ask me to log in again.

I actually saw two sidebars: one from my friends and the other from "everyone who is viewing this from Facebook." The latter one didn't get too much attention from me, but my Swedish friend Lena commented on my status and told me she was watching from Europe, too. My NTU friend Nicole Wu viewed it in Belgium, while another NTU friend Egbert Cheng constently updated his thoughts from Taiwan. I saw many "wows" from my IMC '09 Taiwanese friends in MTC Forum, Evanston when the anchor announced that YO YO MA was one of the performer; same thing happened to my elementary school friend Steven Hsu in New York. Please remember, my TwitterFox is still on, which allowed me to see the comments from Robin in Ireland and David in Los Angeles.

Do you still think I am alone watching the historical moment?