Thursday, November 26, 2009

Nation & World

Washington Whispers by Paul Bedard

Blogs Say Hillary Clinton for Obama's Secretary of State

November 19, 2008 05:43 PM ET | Paul Bedard | Permanent Link | Print

She's probably not the change he had in mind, but President-elect Barack Obama's leak about considering Sen. Hillary Clinton for secretary of state is winning huge support among netizens. Our friends at Zeta Interactive, who mine blogs with their Relevant Noise technology, find that Hillary's been Obama's buzziest name during the transition and now has the backing of some 61 percent of the online noise. Their publicist, Sean Carney of Dukas Public Relations, helped break it down for us:

"Here's what we're seeing. We looked at four people being discussed in the appointment process: Rahm Emanuel (for chief of staff), Eric Holder (for attorney general), Peter Orszag (for Office of Management and Budget), and Hillary Clinton. We then tracked the volume of people talking about them online, or their 'buzz,' from the night Obama was elected until today. What we saw is that Hillary Clinton initially had the most buzz right after the election as people speculated about where she'd be placed, if at all. That waned a bit when Rahm Emanuel was announced as chief of staff, and then picked back up recently when it was floated she might be tapped for secretary of state."

Here are the percentages of the buzz spread around. It shows that Hillary won the overall amount of buzz about the appointments, garnering 44 percent of all conversations online.

Carney said the group also looked at the positive and negative things being said about the appointments. In terms of Clinton, the overwhelming majority thought appointing her was a good idea, with 61 percent of the blogosphere having positive things to say and 39 percent saying negative things.

All of which seems to be one answer to the E-mail I (and millions of others) received today asking Americans to give some feedback to those drawing up the new administration.

Tags: Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Obama transition

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