I bet I can find 10,000 people who want peace in the middle east

Social media helped Obama win the presidency, and now his administration is hoping it can also help ‘win’ the Middle East.

Before Obama’s Cairo address on June 4th, publicity was geared towards asking people to sign up for text messages of the speech in Arabic, Urdu, Persian and English. Which was nice research, given the growing prevalence of cell phone usage in the middle east (over 44% penetration, ‘08 eMarketer). And what about the home team? US cell phone couldn’t subscribe, due to laws prohibiting State Dept. funding to reach a domestic audience, but anyone could receive the frequent updates via twitter & facebook.

Salon.com comments that over 2,000 people gave a virtual thumbs-up/likes this! to the speech’s closing lines - and also on the video “Muslim Americans Serving in the US Government” that joined the White House YouTube channel and website posting the same day.

- Sarah