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The Online Reputation Management of Gordon Brown, the New UK PM

posted on June 27, 2007


It seems like its been planned for a best part of a decade but today finally saw Tony Blair hand over the keys to Ten Downing Street to Gordon Brown. This of course gives us the perfect opportunity to have a quick look into how well Brown and his spin doctors are getting on in the social media space.

Youtube – not surprisingly there are plenty of clips of the new PM delivering speeches on the video sharing site. Most tend to be straight forward footage of Gordon delivering the oratory, but it’s the comments where it gets nasty. If you think some of the digg comments can get mean its worth seeing the bile spilled on this video though there does seem to be a few supporters of GB helping fight his corner. Still better to let the discussion take place; even if it isn’t entirely flattering. The nose picking clip is a little cringe-worthy though. 2/5

Myspace – there is a Myspace profile set up for Gordon though it doesn’t seem that official. It’s obviously the work of a sympathiser who doesn’t seem to have done to have done too good a job keeping the friends comment section spam free. Given the great job the US Presidential Candidates are making of social networks its a little disappointing 3/5

Facebook – I managed to find an official profile for the new Prime Minister but because I’m not in his network so couldn’t see what people were writing on his wall. It’s these kinds of privacy features that make Facebook more appealing than Myspace but isn’t doing the politician any favours. Even more worrying is the huge number of critical groups on the site including “anyone but brown” & “Ban Gordon Brown from Facebook” 1/5

Wikipedia – Mainly due to wiki’s pedantic moderators, his personal page is as impartial as the online encyclopaedia gets. It’s seen plenty of edits in the last few weeks and surprisingly for a public figure it seems free from vandalism attempts. 5/5

Google – Predictably for a well known politic the official government site and national newspapers profiles dominate the SERPs. Apart from an appearance in tenth place for a estate agent namesake the results seem Googlebomb free.

Overall far from a shinying report for the UK’s new top man, though if the US presidential election is anything to go on that might all change by the general election.


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  • Melvin

    The question is, in the UK, how many MySpace/Facebook users are actual voters? Remember that in the UK, moreso than America, most online social networkers are still very young – most often below voting age. Of those who are of voting age, that is the 18-30 group, which is the most politically inactive. Given the political system here, I’m not sure how relevant this is, which is unusual as I’m generally a fan of all things technology.

  • http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/blog.html kelvin newman

    I don’t have any stats to hand, but a significant proportion of the facebook users are university students who are comfortably in voting ages.

    Similarly many younger social media users will be of voting age by the time of the next general election comes round.

    Ignoring all this surely it should be in the interests of the government to appealing to all sections of society rather than chasing only those able to vote?

  • Pingback: Political reputation management | Distilled blog

  • http://www.lff.com Fitness guy

    Interesting…I’m sure the comments will heat up when he starts making things happen one way or another with his troops in Iraq.

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