Yesterday’s inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States was very much a test of the most popular social networking and digital media services. The public did not disappoint, and thankfully, neither did the technology (though not for some, as Stacey Higginbotham writes at NewTeeVee ).

Caroline McCarthy at The Social provides a round-up of the sites for which Inauguration Day shattered traffic and usage records. At Mashable, Pete Cashmore posts the mindblowing numbers pulled in by the Facebook and CNN mashup, while at All Facebook, Nick O’Neill comments:

“It was an impressive showing and being able to share the experience with friends worldwide was most definitely a first. During the stream, I noted that we’ve come a long way since the beginning of internet video in that there appeared to be very few buffering issues. Part of that may have been due to CNN running a separate stream for their online coverage domestically.

Internationally, viewers that were able to log in to the site were able to watch the same stream that CNN television viewers were watching in the United Sates. This was most definitely an amazing experience, highlighting the power of real-time communication combined with live television streams. I believe this is truly the interactive television of the future.”

Biz Stone blogged about how Twitter held up during the show (5x normal tweets-per-second and about 4x tweets-per-minute; no Fail Whale, but a definite delay in receiving updates at the peak).

Anil Dash added to yesterday’s Twitter traffic to note: “…even just seeing a new whitehouse.gov with a blog on the homepage makes me happy.” The Guardian has a composite image of the White House website pre- and post-Obama.

VentureBeat carries pics of the inauguration from space, which is pretty damn cool. Nevertheless, it may be a bruise to the presidential ego to learn, as Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Alley Insider points out, the Obama inauguration video is still not as popular as those puppies.

Elsewhere on the web:

Sky News throws open the citizen journalism gates with a launch of community blogging space.

Twitter surpasses Digg’s market share

Google gives up on Print Ads