As TechCrunch reported, May 28 was supposed to be Microsoft Bing day. Everyone knew for months that Steve Ballmer would announce the new Microsoft Bing search engine during the All Things Digital conference in San Diego. Then minutes later, Google announced a stealth project 4+ years in the making called Wave at the Google IO conference in San Francisco.

So which generated more buzz: Microsoft’s new decision engine, or Google’s new communication platform integrating e-mail, IM, document sharing, search, publishing, Twitter (Twave) and more?

The spikes almost mirrored each other on the 28th, but today Google Wave is generating increasingly higher buzz. Instead of talking about Bing replacing Google search, everyone is talking about whether Google Wave will be the communication platform of the future.

In today’s economic climate, marketers are trying to do more with less by making more efficient media buys. The most cost efficient, and often most trusted form of media is word of mouth. Senior Forrester Research Analyst Jeremiah Owyang called word of mouth the holy grail of marketing.

Organizations like hospitals rely heavily on word of mouth to remain top of mind for patients choosing a health care institution for their treatment. Lee Aase from the Mayo Clinic presented at the Community 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on how the Mayo Clinic is using social media to share their message with the existing community and extend the reputation built over many decades through word of mouth.

As millions of new users continue to join and use Twitter, retweets are quickly becoming the most effective way to socially endorse a brand or comment. A retweet is repeating someone else’s quote or tweet on Twitter. Owyang’s blog post called retweets the core essence of viral content spreading, as the content of a retweet was so valuable and important to that user that he or she was willing to share it with their network. And Forrester research indicates that Twitter users are brand sensitive.

Retweets are one way to make measuring and monitoring word of mouth more tangible and accurate. Repeets.com, a new site launched this week by our own Adam Coomes, tracks the hottest and most retweeted tweets of the day, week and month, providing a snapshot view of the most shared tweets. Mesiab Labs has launched www.retweet.com, an online petition users can sign to endorse retweets with the hope of creating enough support that Twitter will make an official Retweet button.

The chart below shows the steady rise of retweet or RT references online. Check out the spike from April to May 2009. How is your brand using and measuring retweets?

For those of you following American Idol this year, Adam Lambert has been the perceived obvious winner from the start of the Top 12. Not only did he receive constant praise and amazement from the judges, but week after week he sailed through with his over-the-top and powerhouse performances to reach the Final 2. His buzz corresponded quite well, as chatter around Adam Lambert has been dominating the other contestants for weeks.

But, before we declare Adam Lambert our next American Idol, let’s take a step back. Who’s he up against in the finale? Kris… something.. Kris Allen? Who’s that? This underdog came from getting absolutely zero American Idol air-time or hype prior to the live episodes to somehow sneaking by each week with solid, cool performances and becoming the unexpected final contender for the American Idol title. Does he really have a shot? Several weeks ago, I would’ve said “absolutely not.” Tonight, I’m not so sure. In fact, in my uncertainty, I’ve become certain that he has a real shot.

Take a look at this surprising analysis of mentions “voting for” either Adam or Kris.

Who do we predict as the winner? Honestly, based on our analysis up to this hour, it’s damn near impossible to tell. It is so close, it could go either way. But, let’s look at the sentiment for both.

Based on the sentiment results, Kris Allen is slightly ahead (74% positive to Adam’s 72% positive). But again, it’s very close. Given what we’re seeing in Social Radar and my opinion of the determined winner, I predict our American Idol for 2009 will be…

Kris Allen

Why did I choose Kris? Well, our analysis gives him a very slight advantage. And, maybe deep down I like rooting for the underdog. I also think that, although Adam Lambert is a brilliant singer, he just doesn’t bring enough mass appeal with his mostly “Hard Rock” related music-style. Kris has a much more alternative/pop mainstream appeal. But if he does win, our buzz suggests that it will be by a very small margin. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Twenty years ago, when a customer had a bad experience and decided to complain, he told a few friends and that was that. Today, a customer can share a bad experience with millions of people instantly through blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools. And when that customer happens to be NBC Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari, people listen.

Ansari went to the AMC Theater in Burbank on May 11 to see Star Trek: The IMAX Experience. He sent out a tweet that night claiming he was charged an extra $5 for a slightly bigger screen and not the full IMAX experience. Ansari then wrote a blog post asking readers to boycott fake IMAX experiences at Regal and AMC Theaters.

Slashfilm made a post on Digital IMAX supporting Ansari. CHUD and New York Magazine followed suit. Within hours, Ansari tweeted that he also had the support of Deadline Hollywood, Fark, Buzzfeed, Rotten Tomatoes, Onion AV Club, CinemaBlend, Collider and more. His story made the Digg homepage with 2435 Diggs.

Richard Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, defended IMAX against Ansari’s rant and other blogs covering the issue. Though he seemed to brush off Ansari’s comments, saying, “The overwhelming majority of comments on that guy’s blog this morning, more than 90% of them, are vehemently disagreeing with him. And consumers are confirming this with their continued purchases of tickets.” Ansari blogged a response, asking others to share their experiences online.

How much impact can one person have? Check out the trend chart below measuring online chatter. Positive sentiment around IMAX was extremely high the week leading up to Ansari’s rant, with more than 80% positive chatter. Positivity has gone down sharply to 60% over the past two days, with negativity shooting up from less than 10% to nearly 40% of IMAX posts.

We also analyzed keywords around the word IMAX over the last few days. The word fake appeared in 8% and Ansari appeared in 5% of posts. Will the chatter lead to a decrease in customers? How do you think IMAX should respond? Is your brand prepared to handle the power customers have today?

With same-store sales down 7% in the U.S. during the most recent quarter, KFC is attempting to transform itself into KGC.

KFC has been a trending topic on Twitter most of the week thanks to coupons announced on The Oprah Winfrey show on Tuesday, May 5 for two pieces of chicken, two sides and a biscuit. The coupons could be downloaded at UnThinkKFC.com until the end of May 6.

KFC then announced on May 7 that due to “overwhelming response” it can no longer accept the free coupon, but will introduce a rain check program to take care of inconvenienced customers.

KFC’s promotion quickly turned into an exercise in crisis management as long lines and angry customers shared their experiences online. Overall online chatter around KFC has been generally positive following the announcement.

Though the positive chatter has trended slightly down over the past two days while negative chatter has trended up.

This giveaway is KFC’s second national giveaway in the last two weeks. The chain declared Monday, April 27 “UNFry Day” and gave away 4 million pieces of chicken. In addition to a full-page ad in USA Today, KFC also unveiled a new ad campaign with a TV spot produced by Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris containing endorsements from celebrated chefs Sandra Lee, editor-in-chief of Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Magazine, and TV One’s G. Garvin. Despite all of these tactics, the Oprah promotion generated considerably higher chatter for KFC than UNFry day. So marketers take note — free food isn’t exciting enough to talk about unless Oprah is involved.

As a point of reference, we compared KFC chatter to McDonald’s, the fast food chain typically generating the largest amount of chatter online. KFC spiked past McDonald’s during both promotions. But can KFC sustain chatter in the long term? Will customers like the grilled chicken enough to go back and keep talking about it when they have to pay for it?

Inspired by Autoblog’s monthly By the Numbers posts (such as this one), which detail automotive industry sales figures by brand for each month, we decided to build a list of the same brands, but looking instead at conversation volume, as we do in our Social Radar Top 50 Social Brands monthly posts. This list was built using the same methodology as our Top 50 list, but instead focusing purely on a list of 33 major automakers.

Ford has a solid lead here, which is not terribly surprising. As one of the world’s leading automakers for decades, Ford has emerged as the sole American automaker in position to survive without a government bailout. Ford has increased its emphasis on social media, with tactics like the Fiesta Movement campaign, an effort to generate buzz by giving 100 people Ford Fiestas and asking them to share their experiences online through blogs, tweets and Facebook updates leading up to its 2010 release. In addition, most of Ford’s online conversation revolves around the Ford brand, and much less in sub-brands such as Lincoln and Mercury. Brands like Chevrolet have to compete with themselves against similar sister brands such as Pontiac, and this hurts their rankings here.

Chrysler is up 5 places over last month, spurred largely by talks of its bankruptcy. We expect to see this continue throughout May, as their conversation over the last several days has surged well into first place. Also of note here is Pontiac, who moved up 10 places around talks of GM killing the brand.

Click to download the full PDF.

The April 2009 Social Radar Top 50 measures the brands with the most active Web presence based on overall online conversation volume. To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during April 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during April 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

Twitter once again dominates the Top 50 list in April 2009. Already the hottest brand on our March list by a wide margin, Twitter accumulated an additional 10% in chatter in April.

Content sharing website Digg joined the Top 50 this month thanks in part to the April 2 launch of the DiggBar. Enterprise software company Oracle also joined the list with an increase in chatter due to its April 20 acquisition of Sun Microsystems. And as the NBA and NHL Playoffs heated up in April, the NHL joined the Top 50 while the NBA jumped 9 spots.

Dell dropped 23 spots this month as buzz around the March announcement of the new Dell Adamo faded. Kindle also dropped out of the Top 50 as hype around the Kindle 2 subsided.

Conversely, CNN jumped up 10 spots thanks to the race to a million Twitter followers with Ashton Kutcher. IBM also jumped four spots thanks to increasing focus on social media.

View the list below, or download the full PDF. For additional information about how you can analyze chatter sentiment to gauge positivity/negativity, view key words mentioned about your brand and identify key influencers, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @adamcoomes.