President-Elect Obama Is Blog Buzz King

By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers

No wonder he was elected president. Turns out that Barack Obama blew the blog buzz meter off the wall. Our friends at Zeta Interactive, who mine blogs with their Relevant Nose technology, found that he topped the 2008 blog buzz. The group scours 100 million blogs and online communities and found that Obama's buzz was nearly twice of any other politician. But interestingly, it wasn't Sarah Palin who came in second as you might have expected, considering that she was the talk of the nation from September on. Nope, that runner-up slot went to Sen. John McCain. Makes sense, of course, because he was Obama's foe, but it seemed like he was MIA in the blog world, especially when Palin hit the scene. No. 4 was Hillary Clinton and right behind her was another New Yorker, disgraced former Mayor Eliot Spitzer. The buzz rating was done exclusively for Washington Whispers by Zeta.

Says spokesman Sean Carney: "It's no surprise that President-elect Obama garnered the lion's share of the posts, along with the most positive buzz, especially considering his dramatic and historic win. It is interesting to see, though, that coming in second was not Governor Palin, but Senator McCain. Even though Governor Palin was seemingly everywhere in the media to close the year, the online universe ended up discussing the presidential qualities of McCain more in the long term. An interesting note also was the inclusion of Governor Spitzer into the mix, having been forgotten by some as jump-starting the political year with his sex scandal that dominated headlines for weeks."

Here are the numbers:

Barack Obama

· Volume = 521,860
· Positive/negative = 55/45
o Buzz Rating = 28,702

John McCain

· Volume = 292,500
· Positive/negative = 52/48
o Buzz Rating = 15,210

Sarah Palin

· Volume = 181,037
· Positive/negative = 53/47
o Buzz Rating = 9,595

Hillary Clinton

· Volume = 120,555
· Positive/negative = 65/35
o Buzz Rating = 7,836

Eliot Spitzer

· Volume = 98,164
· Positive/negative = 46/54
o Buzz Rating = 4,515