Philly City Hall Recognized for Social Media Savvy. Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter is fairly well-known for utilizing social media to get his message across (as he did to combat city violence in September), and even participated in a social media town hall last fall here at NBC10. Now, Philadelphia City Hall is getting some national recognition for its open data initiatives and social media savvy.

A new study from the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked the 75 largest cities in America on social media savvy. They based their findings on “opportunities for citizen participation and information,” according to a release, and Philadelphia ranked No. 9 overall. The categories they monitored included:

• Hosting of open data portals;
• Comments allowed on blogs and social networks;
• The extent to which online discussions concerned policy as well as city services;
• Information on officials, budgets, city council meetings and neighborhood issues

The rest of the top 10 (some of the cities tied, according to the scoring system):

1. New York/Seattle
2. Virginia Beach
3. Portland
4. San Francisco
5. Kansas City
6. Denver
7. Mesa, Ariz.
8. Louisville
9. Philadelphia/Long Beach, CA/Sacramento
10. San Jose

Toledo, Ohio was ranked last in the survey.

-LD

[NBC10, PRDaily, h/t The20’s @DPBell and @RichNegrin]

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