The first real-time presidency

100 days seems like a long time when every second is captured as an individual event (from multiple perspectives) and then released to play out across the Web.

The atomic unit of Obama’s presidency is each minute and the entire presidency is a mega-event to be subscribed to, to ‘follow’ and to be an active part of – dare I say it, a “node”? We can all be in ‘His’FriendFeed, yes we can.

Instead of applying the question, “Where were you when…” to a single polarising moment, that question is pre-empted in the mashing of ‘Our’ activity streams and personal media with ‘His’. We are all on the same timeline. With the real-time Web, the new question is “What are you doing now?”, not, “Where were you when?”. Where I work, it wasn’t something people could wait to see on the news in the evening – it was live on your desktop. And it’s been live ever since.

You’ve got to wonder if all the folk covering it – individuals, pundits, journalists, mentalists – will be able to keep up this level of real-time reporting throughout not only the first 100 days but for the entire length of the presidency. Some must already be nearing exhaustion. There will be a human cost to be paid…

All this will be fascinating for future historians: just imagine Tony Robinson finding a densely packed horizon called ‘The Obama Layer’ in a Time Team style trench cut into the digital midden pit of our century. Masses of #obama artefacts packed around the worn-out bodies of citizen journalists.

Here are five of the most exciting things we’ve seen from ‘the Obama-stream:

1 – The Politico 44 website – “A living diary of the Obama presidency”

2 – Summaries of what was achieved the ‘first 100 hours’ from The Guardian, The New York Times and ThinkProgress.org

3 – The Obameter – “PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.” (hat tip @kcorrick).

4 – Worldwide Inauguration via Twitter – “Watch as the (Twitter) world watched. Below are the tweets worldwide that included inauguration with a “positive attitude.”" It’s rumoured that at least one of these tweets came from a cave in the dangerous border areas of Waziristan…

5 – My favourite – the advice that the Bush twins have for Obama girls re: living in the White House and having a Dad who’s the most powerful man on Earth.

This almost made me cry…

See the whole video below.