At this point, we’ve all seen the iDon’t advertisements for Verizon’s new Motorola Droid, which is rumored to be the ultimate iPhone killer/competitor. So how big of an influence is the release of this shiny new product having on our feelings towards the Apple iPhone? We used Social Radar to get a sense of whether or not the Droid is actually a threat to the Mac world.

First we look at overall activity for the past month.

Looking at this chart, overall Droid traffic has been no where close to that of the iPhone, however this gap is closing as news of more and more features are being brought to the public eye. So what about sentiment? Which do people like more?

At this point in time, it is interesting that feelings are leveled (for the most part). The Droid hasn’t even been released, yet people are responding fairly well to the information they’ve got so far. Could this mean that we’re all just straight up tired of the iPhone and we’re just THAT excited to get our hands on something different? Or are these number just reflective of how us consumers feed into the big boy reviews? Are we being brainwashed?

This last chart shows top sources for related content in relation to other posts and the reach each has amongst their audience. Who influences you?

Last week, the world was at the edge of their seats as they watched in horror, a giant balloon a drift in the sky. This giant balloon was thought to be holding 6 year old Falcon Heene. Thankfully, the story turned out to be complete nonsense. The opinions that people in social media have on the Heene family are not. This is a look at digital repercussions of this sad, sad, cry for attention.

Here’s a pretty picture of general topics of conversation. Looking at this word cloud, you get the jist of the story without ever having read or heard about Balloon Boy. Text highlighted in red appear with negative instances.

48% of all related posts about the “Balloon Boy” incident were not good. What do you expect when you get the entire state of Colorado riled up on the possibility that a child is drifting hundreds of feet in the air, unprotected.

And once again, microblogs take reign in traffic. If only Balloon Boy was old enough to have a Twitter account….

Last week the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that they would be presenting U.S. President Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” As expected, directly after the announcement, there was an influx in media coverage and reactions; here’s a look at what was going on in social media.

Blogs, tweets and comments piled up, with everyone giving their two cents on the happening. This next chart shows that a hefty 25% of related content felt negatively about Obama’s selection.

Once again, the majority of volume reigned from Twitter, where multiple hash tags were sprouting up around the conversations.

So what exactly are people saying?

Well, people are saying a lot of things, and to our convenience, Social Radar is able to categorize the conversations for our easy comprehension. Achievement and expectations set the tone for most of the chatter, but it is interesting to see that almost 4% of content is categorized into the term “price“, which in this case, is referring to possible repercussions of the designation of this award. Do you feel the U.S. will have to “pay” for anything? Keep a keen eye out on your Tweet feed.

Corporations and advertising agencies often look for creative ways to measure the ROI on campaigns and announcements. Was the direct mail more effective than the TV spot? Did the announcement increase buzz? Was it positive or negative?

We used Social Radar to create a mini case study on Verizon’s trend chart below to determine the cause of the spike in chatter on Oct. 6.

I simply clicked on the peak on Oct. 6 to generate some instant analysis. First, the topic cloud:

We can instantly determine that Google, Android Phones and Map were hot topics on Oct. 6 based on the size of the words. And those three words were all green, meaning sentiment was generally positive. Good news for Verizon so far.

By hovering over the word Google below, we quickly find that Google was mentioned in 47% of posts on Oct. 6, and sentiment was 90% positive. Verizon announced on Oct. 6 an agreement with Google to co-develop several Android-based devices and promised to introduce two Android-based handsets within the next few weeks.

Similarly, hovering over the word map below shows that it appeared in 12% of posts and 81% of the comments were positive. AT&T was mentioned as a related topic. During the Oct. 5 Monday Night Football broadcast, Verizon aired a new TV spot capitalizing on complaints about the AT&T’s network with a play on Apple’s signature tagline for the iPhone: “There’s a map for that.”

In addition, by scrolling down the Social Radar analysis page, we find the full list of 11,394 posts about Verizon on Oct. 6. The first two on the list are about the new ad campaign and the Google Android announcement.

So within a few seconds,we conducted some detailed analysis on Verizon’s spike in chatter on Oct. 6. Will the new ad campaign and Google partnership announcement lead to increased market share for Verizon? People are certainly talking.

On Friday October 2, 2009, President Obama flew to Copenhagen, Denmark to urge the International Olympic Committee to pick his hometown of Chicago to be the host of the 2016 Olympic games. Accompanying the President included first lady, Michelle Obama, as well as talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

We used Social Radar to research the 2016 Olympic games chatter.

We decided to pull a chart of positive, negative, and conflicting chatter over October 1 to October 3, 2009.

Let’s also take a look at the context of the chatter from the October 1 to October 3, 2009.

The data clearly shows that the overall sentiment of Rio de Janerio being chosen to host the 2016 Games as positive (as you can see from the words highlighted in green).  However, the news that Chicago was cut first round was devastating to many as you can see by the volume of negative words used.

We also decided to look at the positive and negative conversation trend (green and red lines) correlating with conversation volume (the bars) from the month leading up to the announcement to the day following the announcement.

As you can see, there was a significant amount of positive chatter in the month leading up to the announcement. However, on October 2 we see the negative trend line increase while the positive trend line decrease. This change in trends could be due to the mixed emotions felt by many. Sadly, there will be no Olympic games for Chicago in the near future.

It’s been at center stage in recent tech news, with companies strategizing to develop the ultimate mixed reality application. Popular review website Yelp as well as long time mobile phone manufacturers Nokia have hopped on the augemented reality wagon, bringing major hype to this technology and stirring up some conversations in social media.

The question stands: How do we feel about these star-trek-like nodes of information overlays? Social Radar tells us this:

Since the beginning of July, a whopping 87% of posts, comments, and chatter around augmented reality has been positive. Notice that only a mere 2% of people are conflicted in their opinions. So can we assume that this will be the wave of the near future?

Perhaps. Looking at the sentiment trend graph, positive volume has been on a steady incline overall. Note that the hump in negativity that came mid September was brought on due to an announcement of an AR release by Nokia, that did not bode so well amongst consumers. Next we’ll take a look at actual feelings and overall concerns.

It’s confirmed. Augmented reality is COOL. So whats the “problem”? Apparently there are a few concerns, including integration of other phone features and overall functionality. People are scared that these apps will not improve their daily lives and instead complicate the sole purpose of the device in question. I guess you can say that there is a lot of doubt.

Want to get in on some AR discussions? Here are the hot beds.

Here’s an idea; an augmented reality app that pulls up social media analytics when a product, business, or person is over-layed. Haha!

The September 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 September 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during September 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 falls a bit, but still takes top spot. LG’s new BL20 Chocolate helped LG jump 11 spots. NFL rises again this month as the NFL season heats up. MTV jumps 13 spots due to buzz around the MTV Video Music awards. AT&T’s announcement of MMS support on the iPhone raised AT&T’s position up 5 spots.

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.

Toyota yesterday instructed 3.8 million vehicle owners to take the floor mats out of their cars, trucks and SUVs. This decision followed the deaths of four people in California in a recent crash involving a Lexus with a stuck accelerator pedal.

How did this announcement affect Toyota’s brand? We used Social Radar to research Toyota chatter.

First, we decided to pull a chart of positive, negative and conflicting Toyota chatter over September 29 and 30, just after the announcement.

Let’s also take a look at the context of Toyota’s chatter over September 29 and 30.

The data clearly shows that a large majority of this content is related to the floor mat recall. And, it’s almost entirely negative (as shown by the many topics highlighted in red). Additionally, most of the Toyota chatter was categorized by quality related mentions, which were highly negative.

We then decided to look at the positive and negative conversation trend (the green and red lines) correlating with conversation volume (the bars).

Toyota chatter was quite positive leading up to the announcement. Interestingly, Toyota chatter surged in negativity on September 30 but quickly shifted back to positive the very next day. This strong turnaround shows that people may be quickly forgiving Toyota and moving past this unforeseen mistake.