Reports surfaced this week that McDonald’s may cut health insurance for its nearly 30,000 hourly workers unless U.S. regulators waive a requirement of new health care legislation championed by President Barack Obama.

The words health, healthcare or insurance are currently appearing in an astounding 41% of conversations around McDonald’s online.

After churning through four advertising agencies in five years, Chipotle made the decision to bring advertising in-house in November 2009. Chipotle was built on word-of-mouth marketing, and advertising was never important to CEO Steve Ells. The chain hasn’t added a menu item in 17 years and does not have a regular cadence of pricing promotions.

We ran analysis around Chipotle over the last year and a half. Overall chatter has been trending down since around the time Chipotle ditched ad agencies. Coincidence? Is Chipotle giving their customers enough to talk about without the help of a creative agency?

Facebook and Skype are working on a deal that would integrate Facebook Connect with Skype accounts, which will enable users to SMS, chat or call Facebook friends directly from Skype.

Chatter around Skype has already doubled today in the hours since the announcement.

Skype chatter trend

Chatter around Skype is currently 79% positive.

Skype sentiment

We also compared chatter around Skype to Google Voice, a new service that provides a single phone number for all a user’s cell, home, and work numbers, and lets the users manage voice services online.

Skype vs. Google Voice chatter trend

Unlike Skype, Google Voice is a browser-based service. Google Voice is not tied to a geographical location nor linked to a specific handset nor matched with an IP address; it’s tied to a person.

After rejecting the Google Voice app last year, Apple has now approved and will offer Google Voice via the iTunes app store. The Google Voice mobile app would allow a caller to send and receive free SMS and use cheap long-distance calling.

The future of communication is coming fast, it will be interesting to watch how innovative companies and providers prepare and react to new opportunities.

The Social Network, a movie about the founders of the social-networking website Facebook, will hit theaters this Friday. The film is already generating Oscar buzz, and some have even compared the movie to Citizen Kane, the greatest movie of all time.

Many have speculated that the storyline paints a negative picture of Facebook and specifically founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is portrayed as a tyrant and serial bridge burner. Zuckerberg recently donated $100 million to Newark, New Jersey public schools, in a seemingly calculated attempt to boost his public image.

As we reported in last week’s Buzz Weekly, chatter around Mark Zuckerberg jumped from 57% to 83% positive after his Newark donation announcement. We decided to run further analysis around the movie, and compare chatter to Facebook and Zuckerberg.

Over the last three months, sentiment around the movie has been 80% positive, while sentiment around Facebook was only 67% positive and Zuckerberg was only 60% positive.

Sentiment around The Social Network vs. Facebook vs. Mark Zuckerberg since June 1

Negative sentiment around Facebook specifically has been on the rise. Do you think negative chatter will surpass positive chatter after the movie is released?

Facebook sentiment trend

Discussing buzz around hot topics. This week we cover Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and his $100M donation, Blockbuster’s bankruptcy, and the new Fall TV season.

Facebook had its worst day performance-wise in over four years, with 2.5 hours of downtime yesterday. The problem stemmed from an automated system Facebook built to check for invalid configuration values in its cache, which backfired to the point that Facebook had to turn off the site entirely to recover.

We used Social Radar to run analysis on Facebook conversations. Sentiment around Facebook is currently an astonishing 71% negative.

As Facebook strives to become the social fabric of the web — with Like buttons, widgets, apps and authentication buttons integrated on various other websites — its scary to think of the results of extended downtime. At the same time, as others pointed out, for handling 500 million users, we should be praising Facebook for running smoothly the majority of the time. What are your thoughts?

Fox announced yesterday that Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez would join Randy Jackson on the American Idol judging panel.

Overall sentiment around American Idol was only 69% positive yesterday.

Individual sentiment around Jennifer Lopez was 68% positive, and Steven Tyler only 62% positive.

How will the new judges and the absence of Simon Cowell impact ratings? Overall chatter around American Idol is currently at an all time low.

In 2010 BMW launched one of its biggest branding campaigns to date. A new theme, “The Joy of Driving,” was integrated into every television, digital and print ad as well as event and team sponsorships. The theme shifted the focus from the car to the car owner.

Audi has pushed two significant platforms so far this year, including its tongue-in-cheek series of comparative ads portraying Audi as a better alternative to a Lexus, Mercedes and even Ferrari.

AdvertisingAge reviewed and compared the effectiveness of the BMW and Audi campaigns, including video, online, social, magazine and mobile.

We used Social Radar to analyze chatter around BMW, Audi, Lexus, Mercedes and Ferrari to determine which car company was generating the most buzz online.

BMW vs. Audi vs. Lexus vs. Mercedes vs. Ferrari chatter trend

Within the last month, BMW generated the most chatter. According to AdAge, BMW out voiced Audi online in terms of sheer impressions with nearly four times the load, and had a higher ratio of rich media content.

What were people saying? We analyzed overall sentiment around each car company below. Audi generated the most positive sentiment, followed by BMW, Mercedes, Lexus and Ferarri.

For Audi specifically, posts around attractiveness were overwhelmingly 98% positive. Expectations, quality and price posts were also all generally positive.

For BMW, words like grand, perfect, impressive, cool, nice and innovative appeared in posts.

Who’s talking? We can take a further look at key top sources sorted by influence and relevance.

We can even dive into specific posts, ranked by influence.

For additional information or further analysis, visit http://infegy.com.

Earlier this month Burger King introduced nine new breakfast items – including blueberry biscuits, pancake platters, and Seattle’s Best coffee — and launched a major breakfast marketing blitz with an eye toward eating up some of McDonald’s morning business.

The move was Burger King’s biggest introduction of new items at one time ever, in attempt to take breakfast market share from McDonald’s.

We ran analysis on Burger King conversations over the past month. On the day of the launch, the word ‘breakfast’ appeared in 25% of Burger King related posts online.

Breakfast mentions within Burger King chatter

Breakfast accounts for about 12 percent of Burger King revenue, while McDonald’s gets one-fourth of its revenue from breakfast, according to Burger King Chief Marketing Officer Mike Kappitt.

With the exception of Burger King’s breakfast announcement day, McDonald’s appears in the breakfast conversation much more often than Burger King currently.

Burger King vs. McDonald’s mentions within overall breakfast chatter

Sentiment around Burger King breakfast has only been 72% positive since the announcement September 7.

Burger King breakfast sentiment

Burger King will be airing six television spots over an 11-week cycle that introduce consumers to each of its nine new breakfast menu items. We will be monitoring buzz over the next few months and will check back in to let you know if Burger King achieves its goal to improve awareness.