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Already, they’re calling him ‘Tech President,’ President 2.0., and the first social media president. As Barack Obama took office at noon EST today, one of his first official acts at 12:01 was to switch over to a new Whitehouse.gov and introduce the new White House Blog. His director of New Media for the White House, Macon Phillips, welcomed readers in “Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov”:

“A short time ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and his new administration officially came to life. One of the first changes is the White House’s new website, which will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world.”

The White House’s first post also notes that initial new media efforts will center around three priorities: Communication, Participation and Transparency – and that last point in particular caught the eye of blogger Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal.

The blog TechPresident was started to observe how political campaigns are using the Web, and this group of writers continue to monitor the new administration’s savvy use of new media and social networking sites. Clearly, Obama’s use of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube during the long campaign was pioneering. Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion blog looks at the lessons of social media “Inside Obama’s Social Media Toolkit.”

The power and breadth of these channels were evident as well during today’s Inauguration Ceremonies. TechChuck reports on the “mindblowing numbers” generated by CNN and Facebook as part of their live streaming partnership:

As of noon:

• There were 200,000+ status updates through the Facebook integration on CNN.com
• At that time, 3,000 people commented on the Facebook CNN feed per minute
• Obama’s Facebook Fan Page has more than 4 million fans and in excess of 500,000 wall posts

As of 11:45 a.m., CNN:

• Had served 13.9 million live video streams globally since 6 am
• Had broken its all time total daily streaming record (from Election Day) of 5.3 million live streams.

So what’s next? Obama will continue to use his BlackBerry, and he’ll be the first president with a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office. Instead of ‘fireside chats’ over the radio, we’ll likely be treated to a regular series of YouTube interviews. There’s also going to be continued speculation over his promise to appoint the country’s first chief technology officer (CTO). For now, though, Newsweek hints at what to expect from our new “President 2.0”:

Barack Obama is the first major politician who really “gets” the Internet. Sure, Howard Dean used the Web to raise money. But Obama used it to build an army. And now, that army of digital kids expects to stick around and help him govern. Crowd-sourced online brainstorming sessions? Web sites where regular folks hash out policy ideas and vote yea or nay online? A new government computer infrastructure that lets people get a look into the workings of Washington, including where the money flows and how decisions get made? Yes to all those and more.”