One of the biggest stories of the week has been Iranians’ use of social media to communicate with each other and the outside world during the Iran election crisis. Protesters used Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia and blogs to disseminate information and help people take action.

The Iran crisis has literally given journalistic power to the people, as individuals spread news of developing events in the country. Twitter users adopted the hashtag #CNNfail to proclaim that “new media” (individuals using Twitter) had provided better coverage than “old media” (CNN) throughout the early stages of the crisis.

We decided to use Social Radar to analyze and compare the reach of messages posted by individuals with low influence vs. high influence. Social Radar tracks influence based on the number of links to a specific blog or account. For example, most average Twitter users or bloggers would be considered low influence, while sites like Engadget or CNN would be considered high influence and major media news sources.

The chart below provides interesting results. We measured the number of posts over the last few weeks for low influencers vs. high influencers on the topic of Iran or Iran election. Iran election conversation among low influencers is spreading twice as quickly as conversation among high influencers. The Iran crisis has proven that individuals can report relevant news quickly. What does it mean for “old media” in the future? Will we continue to see more and more examples of individuals using social media to beat established journalists to news stories?

With all the hype surrounding the Facebook land grab, Facebook buzz surged late June 12 and early June 13. At 9 p.m. PST on June 12, Facebook usernames opened to the public enabling users to choose a vanity URL for their profile page.

Vanity URLs encourage sharing and increased activity on Facebook. Mashable reported that 200,000 users registered usernames within the first 3 minutes, and more than 1,000,000 users registered within the first hour. Will vanity URLs affect your interaction on Facebook?

Apple announced a new iPhone 3GS at their World Wide Development Conference in San Francisco on Monday. We analyzed buzz on several of the key features announced and ranked them below by percentage of posts. Video recording capability received a significant amount of buzz, with mentions in nearly 15% of all iPhone-related posts in the last 24 hours. Price and camera were also hot topics of discussion.

Overall user sentiment around the iPhone 3GS has been positive so far.

We also compared buzz around the iPhone 3GS to the Palm Pre launch over the weekend. iPhone 3G and 3GS generated significantly higher buzz after its 6/8 announcement than Palm Pre did on its 6/6 announcement. Which will continue to generate more buzz in the weeks ahead? Will buzz correlate to sales?

E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) has concluded and we have analyzed the most discussed announcements from the show.  Microsoft’s motion-tracking Project Natal unsurprisingly took the top spot followed with the PSP Go.  Metal Gear Solid, the most discussed game, came in third.  Some other notable mentions are Gran Turismo 5 versus Forza 3, for which GT5 generated the most chatter.  Also, Scribblenauts is quite far down the list, but today the game as been generating a strong upsurge in mentions and we expect this one to get a bit more attention over the next few days.

Wednesday we posted a sentiment comparison between Project Natal and the PS3 motion-tracking controller you can see here.

The full top listing is in the chart after the jump, displayed by the percentage of E3 discussions mentioning that announcement.  The Top 10 is in the image below:

Top 10:

Continue reading…

The May 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 May 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during May 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

The top six brands held their positions in this month’s list. Twitter, Google, Obama, iPhone, Facebook and YouTube remain strong with increased buzz across all online mediums. Windows jumped past Mac this month thanks to buzz on Windows 7. Linux moved up two spots, while the NBA jumped six spots thanks to an exciting month of Playoff games. The NBA’s active Twitter account has nearly 700,000 followers, and several players are also tweeting. Notably, @dwighthoward, who gave a shout out to his Twitter followers in a post-game interview, has quickly amassed nearly 200,000 followers and has been called the next big ad man by Ad Age.

Dell jumped 22 spots thanks in part to a new Studio line of laptops, as well as the continued growth of @delloutlet, which has nearly 600,000 followers on Twitter. BlackBerry jumped five spots, corresponding with their strong sales — BlackBerry Curve is outselling iPhone so far in 2009. Nintendo dropped 8 spots as some of the video game chatter shifted to Microsoft’s Project Natal and Sony’s Motion Controller.

View the full list below, or download the 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.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is wrapping up in Los Angeles. At their respective keynotes, both Microsoft and Sony made major announcements in a similar vain.  Microsoft presented their Project Natal, a camera-based device which can track full body motion without needing a controller. Shortly after, Sony demonstrated a prototype high-precision motion tracking controller for the Playstation 3.  Both exciting and impressive in different ways.

We decided to see the web’s reaction to these announcements, and threw the Wii Motion Plus accessory in for comparison.  MotionPlus is an add-on coming for the Nintendo Wii controllers which improves their motion tracking accuracy and capabilities.

Project Natal had the most positive response. Additionally, in regards to overall conversation volume, it had around three times what Sony’s motion controller generated.  Interestingly, after these announcements, we saw a notable increase in negative chatter around the Wii Motion Plus, with negativity increasing around 8%. This is attributed to users seeing these new developments as superior to Nintendo’s long-time-coming accessory.