AP News has a great piece on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of the web to promote the State Department:

In less than three months, Clinton’s State Department has embarked on a digital diplomacy drive aimed at spreading the word about American foreign policy and restoring Washington’s image. Part of a broader Internet outreach by President Barack Obama’s administration, Clinton’s Web efforts already have outpaced those of her predecessors.

Since taking over at Foggy Bottom, Clinton’s team has built on e-diplomacy innovations developed during George W. Bush’s presidency:

• They have revamped the department’s Web site and the Dipnote blog with a fresh array of features, graphics and colorful posts.
• Users can track her foreign travel on an interactive map.
• They can keep up virtually with her every move through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube ().
• They can pose questions through an “ask-the-secretary” column that recently was revised to “text the secretary.”

Internal State Department statistics provided to AP show a surge of interest in the State Department’s website. The “daily views of the Dipnote have doubled from 10,000 a year ago to 20,000 today, with 700 subscribers to its RSS feed, twice as many as in March 2008.”  

Peter Daou, who was Clinton’s Internet Communications Director during her presidential campaign says, “What they are bringing in is more willingness to experiment. They are starting to push the envelope.”

Read the rest of the piece here. I expect we’ll be seeing lot’s more innovation and communication from Secretary Clinton’s State Department.

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