The Verizon Wireless Droid launched last week and was quick to gain buzz on the internet as consumers got a hold of their very own mini-machines. The Droid gained momentum closer to its release date as numerous reviews, tweets and comments poured into social media.

Taking a deeper look into the content of these posts, we are able to pin-pont key concerns that users associate with Verizon’s new product. The fact that the Droid is being offered at the reasonable price of $199 bodes well across the board.

Looking at this sentiment trend, we are able to see emotions mapped out over time. As expected, negativity climbed after phones went on sale and consumers were actually able to get their hands on the product. On a good note, things look to be calming down quickly, but, as usual, can be expected to fluctuate a long the way as more and more of these devices are disbursed.

Thinking about getting a Droid, but aren’t really sure? Social media has become a very useful product research outlet for many, and this next graph illustrates where the best places are to look for insight. Nearly half of the content related to the Droid is coming out of the social media world via blogs. If you’re looking for fast and to-the-point feedback, Droid conversations are sprouting up all over the Twitter network. Simply search Twitter for the #droid hashtag to see what people are saying or to speak your mind!

Yesterday’s MadMen season 3 finale struck up some intense Tweeting on a typically calm Sunday evening. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin it for you by writing out a synopsis, I will however, let you in on some social media conversations about this drastic turn of events.

Postings reached a high on Sunday as people were immediately hopping onto the internet to give their input, blog their hearts out, as well as feed into some Twitter action where multiple hashtags (#madmen) were forming. In my personal opinion, I think this was probably the best episode to date. A lot of stuff went down and it seems that many of the characters are beginning to form new paths for themselves. Looking at sentiment:

A whopping 83% of people totally dug the changes (which I won’t mention in case you haven’t seen it yet). If the suspense is killing you, this word cloud will hint you in on the happenings…

Lots of Wow’s popped in, along with talk about some used-to-be-familiar-but-went-away characters like the lovely Joan & infamous Sal.

So where is this going? Well it’s all about Twitter right now. I’m sure that as next season approaches, conspiracy theories and nonsense will come to surpass as it can be expected that leaks and spoilers won’t be able to keep their secrets held ’till the start of Season 4. Can’t wait!

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

There are no big surprises with the Top 10 this month. NFL dropped 10 spots as the season opening excitement has died down a bit, while NBA jumped 11 spots as the basketball season kicks off. AT&T has dropped, while other cell phone related brands have increased such as LG and Blackberry, as well as newcomers to the list - HTC and Android. With many new Android devices out and on the horizon, as well as the recent “droid does” campaign, Android has joined our list this month at a surprising 29th place.

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.