A veteran of Internet business operations and Washington tech policy was named to President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, a move that could signal the prominence of high-tech policy in the new administration.
Julius Genachowski, a former executive of Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, will help Obama choose members of his new administration, according to Obama’s transition headquarters in Chicago.
Meanwhile, NewTeeVee has the number tallies that show Obama took the Social Media Advantage in the election with Obama pulling in nearly 900 million views [graph] compared to McCain’s 550 million [graph]:
Obama’s video view lead was built up, in part, by the long Democratic primary race, where he was fighting Hillary Clinton in person and on the web while McCain sat pretty as his party’s chosen candidate. (Sorry, but you’ll have to click on the graphs above to see them in full size; they’re too wide for our column.)
[Divinity Metrics] measured views across more than 200 video sites dating to July 2007, finding 64,092 total videos related to McCain and 104,456 total videos related to Obama. McCain’s campaign posted 376 videos and Obama posted 1,982 videos. The biggest viewership peaks for both appear to be around the time the Dow plummeted, in the thick of the election.
Obama also took the Social Media advantage:
On social networks, Obama also held a clear lead, with 844,927 MySpace friends compared to McCain’s 219,404. Just between November 3rd and November 4th (election day), Obama gained over 10,000 new friends, while McCain only gained about 964. On Twitter, Obama gained 2865 new followers between the 3rd and 4th (for a total of 118,107), while John McCain’s Twitter account only has a paltry 4942 followers in total.