Best: Fritz Henderson
Given that he was pushed out of GM on December 1 after only eight months on the job, Henderson may seem out of place on the "best" buzz list.
He led GM out of bankruptcy in July, but didn't produce results fast enough for board members, many of whom were selected by the troubled automaker's majority owner, the U.S. government.
The blogosphere, though, wasn't as hard on the 25-year GM veteran, awarding him a 78% positive rating.
Henderson benefited from positive reviews of GM's new Chevrolets and Cadillacs and also scored with the popular GM "Reinvention" ad campaign, which Zeta Interactive found in a separate survey to be one of the top five most buzzed-about campaigns of the year.
NEXT: Worst buzz: John Thain
Last updated December 30 2009: 2:06 PM ET
How it was done: Zeta's technology mines the online media landscape -- including millions of blogs, message boards, and social media posts -- and then uses algorithms to measure both the volume and tone of conversations about a given subject -- in this case, the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Rankings are based on the percentage of total chatter about a given CEO that is qualified as positive.
