How is the social web reacting to the news of Colbert taking over for Letterman?

By Natan Edelsburg 

It’s official. CBS has announced that Stephen Colbert will replace David Letterman as the host of the Late Show, when we retires in 2015. Colbert has yet to tweet about it to his over 6 million followers. Kontera, a provider of insights for brand marketers has already seen a huge amount of activity on the social web. Here are the details.

According to Kontera, a provider of insights for brand marketers, an hour after the announcement there were 23,000 tweets about the news, with a sentiment of 27% Positive, 61% Neutral, and 11% Negative. The negatives were were partially driven by people’s disappointed that a women didn’t get the job, but mostly it was big fans of The Colbert Report who don’t want to see his character disappear.

In the last three months, April 4 was the most active day for conversation about the late night talk show hosts, which was David Letterman announcing his retirement.  There was 87% as much consumption (i.e. how often their names were seen online, via mobile and across social networks) around Jimmy Fallon on February 18 – the day after his first Tonight Show – and 73% as much consumption around Jay Leno on February 7 – the day of his last Tonight Show.

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The social TV world will wait to see how Colbert’s job change will affect his presence on social. He of course won the first Golden Tweet Award back in 2010.

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