Websites across the globe have reported record activity for Barack Obama's inauguration as US president, with many having crashed as a result of the unprecedented demand.
Once again highlighting the growing popularity of the internet at the expense of more traditional forms of media, new figures from US news website CNN.com revealed that it received 136 million page views and served more than 21.3 million live streams for the event.
In addition, Google has also announced that it saw a ten-fold increase in inauguration-related searches on the day itself, while searches were also significantly down during the ceremony, indicating that millions of people across the world took at least some time off to watch the historic occasion.
The web engine's own blog confirmed: "The overall query volume of Google searches dropped in the US from the time President Obama took the oath of office until the end of his inaugural speech, demonstrating that all eyes were on today's festivities."
Other sites to report a fall in activity for the period include Flickr and YouTube, while many online businesses are likely to have experienced a drop in sales.
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