The inauguration of President Obama this week was groundbreaking for loads of very well documented reasons. The mainstream media have done a good job of highlighting the role that web technologies played in the historic election victory. Yet I thought some of the most exciting uses of social media were on display on inauguration day itself.

CNN’s hook up with Facebook looked like a good interactive idea, although when we checked out the ceremony at cnn.com the site could only stretch to congratulating us for having ‘made it’, but didn’t have enough capacity to actually show us the live stream. Thankfully the guys at Obama fave UStream had things completely under control for trouble-free laptop viewing of the historic fudging of the oath.

If ever there was a time for Twitter to go down it was this and although we did notice some sluggishness, it proved to be the most valuable resource for hearing the true ’voice of the people’, particularly via the excellent http://obama.twistori.com. Did 46% of Americans really vote for McCain? They’re being very quiet indeed.

Check out the Kyte player above for web tech evangelist Robert Scoble roaming around the amazing operation at Al Gore’s Current TV. Is this the future of live event journalism? It certainly looks like they may be onto something with those banks of people monitoring the vast public dialogue. That’s where the scoops come from today.

Will the UK - we’re told this week that Twitter penetration is surprisingly higher here than in the States - embrace such media innovation around our own election time?