One of the neatest things that happened were all of the social image mash-ups that were put together. Millions of people emailed photos to one of the many aggregators (NYTimes, CNN, et cetera), and we were able to see some incredible footage that was simply crowd sourced. CNN, thorough Microsoft’s PhotoSynth, did one of my favorites. Check it out here.

Mark Ghuneim, Founder/CEO of digital marketing agency Wiredset and social media service Trendrr, put together can excellent post on Mashable.com about the incredible impact the Social Media Sphere saw on inauguration day. Not only was it a politically memorable day, but technologically too. Check out the numbers (as put together by Mark):

Twitter — “Tweets containing “Obama” hit 35,000 per hour during his speech, and topped 150,000 for the day.”

YouTube Uploads — “There have been 332,000 new videos uploaded to YouTube with the tag of “Obama” this week, and 17,000 new videos for “Inauguration” in the last five days, 10,000 of which came in the last 24 hours [of the inauguration].”

Images on Flickr — 30,000 new uploads tagged “Obama” in last 24 hours of the ceremony.

And Blogs… — This is was just record breaking. Technorati reported 18,000 new blog entries related to Obama on that day alone.

These are all mind blowing figures. After allowing this to digest for a few days, I am left with the question of whether this all happened because of Obama or the factor of Social Media. Undoubtedly, it is a mix of both, however, what would we have seen if McCain had won. I am sure we would have also hit unprecedented social media happenings as result of technology today, but, is it the embrace of the Obama campaign that has and will keep this fervor alive?

[Photo Courtesy Of habfan1990]

The team has a roster of exceptional professionals, however, the two virtual world experts are New York Law School professor Beth Noveck and Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a Chairman Emeritus of IBM. Both have worked intimately with virtual worlds and are at the forefront of connectivity and the 3D web. They also have worked extensively in Second Life.

[Professor Beth Noveck's Second Life Avatar - Photo Courtesy of New York Law School Blog]

It is not clear what this all means, however, this team brings up many exciting prospects for technology and politics. I am psyched to see how the Innovation Agenda pans out and the way this administration will implement technology and specifically social media into the American mains stream.

Via New World Notes (Thanks!).

The unprecedented campaign Obama ran was firmly tied to his use of social media to reach out to his friends and (once) foes. From Facebook and MySpace to the iPhone App and Twitter, people felt an intimate connection with the candidate that has never existed in the fabric of any political campaign.

Now, President Elect Obama will have the challenge to maintain that tight connection with his followers. Already threatening to take his Blackberry away, the government’s tight restriction may limit the intimacy that users want and the potential of political transparency that social media may offer.

The BBC published an article last week, titled “Barack Obama’s plans for the web,” which offers an interesting analysis on the subject. I recommend this quick read.

In the political – new media world, we await what Obama and his administration will do to keep us connected.

What would you like to see the administration do with social media? Or technology in general?