As a startup, it’s probably pretty scary and frustrating when you hear that Google has launched a competing offering. Tuesday, that happend for Dropbox when Google launched Google Drive. Google’s announcement came on the heels of Microsoft’s SkyDrive update announcement earlier this week.

Many expressed concern over privacy, but Google’s policy is actually no worse than its rivals. Google’s new cloud-based document and storage solution is priced aggressively and boasts best-in-class integration with other Google services — including Google Docs.

The cloud storage and collaboration space is more competitive than ever before. Google faces competition not just from cloud companies such as Box and Dropbox, but from Apple, Microsoft and Amazon as well.

A 100GB Dropbox account costs more than three times what a Google Drive account costs. Can Dropbox survive? We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

Dropbox conversation chatter

Google Drive was mentioned in 71% of all Dropbox conversations since yesterday. Although some of those mentions were to say things like Google Drive won’t be a Dropbox killer.

Google Drive vs. Microsoft SkyDrive vs. Dropbox buzz

Google Drive chatter more than doubled Dropbox and SkyDrive chatter online since yesterday.

If you’re a Dropbox user, will you switch to Google Drive?

Motorola has resurrected the RAZR as a Droid-branded smartphone. That’s right, the razor-thin flip phone that sold more than 130 million units in its four-year run in the mid-2000s is back.

Motorola released the Droid Razr on Friday, 11/11/11, at 11:11 a.m. Amazon offered a Friday-only deal on the new Razr through its AmazonWireless site giving you the Razr for $111.11 with a Verizon contract.

How did buzz on the resurrected RAZR compare to the original? We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online back to 2007 to find out.

Motorola RAZR buzz

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Current RAZR sentiment

Within the last 30 days, conversations around RAZR have been 88% positive. The word ‘Android’ is appearing in 47% of all RAZR conversations and is 92% positive.

Current RAZR content distribution

Within the last 30 days, 40% of RAZR mentions came via Twitter, 48% via blogs, and 8% via forums.

Are you happy to see the RAZR attempting to make a comeback? Will you buy a Droid RAZR?

New findings from ChangeWave Research show that demand for the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s first tablet, is outpacing pre-launch demand compared to the iPad. Surprised, we decided to use Social Radar to analyze buzz around Kindle Fire and iPad online.

Kindle Fire vs. iPad buzz

iPad generated 35x more buzz over the last month than Kindle Fire.

Content distribution

Both iPad and Kindle Fire are receiving balanced press via Twitter and blogs. Though iPad is generating significantly more chatter online.

Can Amazon’s Kindle Fire take market share from Apple’s iPad?

British band Coldplay released its fifth studio album, Mylo Xyloto, Monday, Oct. 24. The album is positioned to head straight to the top of the Billboard 200 charts next week.

Coldplay chose not to make its new album available on Spotify or any other streaming music subscription service. Fans will either need to purchase physical copies or MP3 downloads from places like Apple’s iTunes store, Microsoft’s Zune store or Amazon. The decision is more likely financially motivated as Coldplay stands to make a great deal more money by encouraging the tens of millions of consumers who have streaming music subscriptions to purchase the songs.

How has the new album release affected Coldplay’s buzz online? We used Social Radar to find out.

Coldplay buzz October 2009-present

Coldplay buzz is currently more than 3x higher than its previous high point within the last two years.

Coldplay sentiment

Conversations around Coldplay are currently 76% positive online. The new album name, Mylo Xyloto, is currently being mentioned in 6% of Coldplay conversations. Rihanna, who collaborated with Coldplay on a song for the new album, is being mentioned in 5% of all Coldplay conversations. The classic Coldplay track “Fix You” is currently mentioned in 6% of all Coldplay conversations.

After months of speculation, Amazon unveiled its new tablet this morning, the $199 Kindle Fire. Smaller and cheaper than Apple’s iPad, the Kindle Fire has a 7-inch display and runs on a heavily customized version of Google’s Android operating system. For a feature breakdown, visit Amazon Kindle Fire vs. iPad 2 vs. Nook Color: by the numbers.

Amazon’s focus is on media consumption — the Kindle Fire pulls together all of Amazon’s media services from the cloud, including 18 million digital books, movies, songs, magazines, apps, and games. The device is designed to tap into all of the digital media products and services Amazon has been building for the past few years: Amazon Web Services, Instant Video, Kindle Books, Amazon’s MP3 music store, cloud storage, and Android app store.

Priced at less than half the $499 starting price of an iPad, the Kindle Fire aims to undercut Apple’s popular tablet, which has sold 28 million units since its 2010 debut. ”The price is shockingly low,” Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also unveiled a new version of Amazon’s classic e-ink Kindle, now called the Kindle Touch, which will start at $99.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations around Amazon and Apple online.

Amazon vs. Apple buzz

Amazon chatter spiked past Apple today following the announcements. Kindle chatter (purple) spiked up near iPad (green) levels today as well.

Content breakdown

Amazon and Kindle Touch are being heavily blogged about today. More than 51% of Kindle Touch mentions came via blogs this morning, while 83% of iPad mentions came via Twitter.

Amazon sentiment

Conversations around Amazon are currently 84% positive.

Apple sentiment

Despite excitement around Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5 announcement October 4, overall conversations around Apple are currently 76% positive, 8% less positive than Amazon.

iPad sentiment

Conversations around the iPad are currently 86% positive.

Kindle Fire sentiment

Conversations around Kindle Fire are currently only 75% positive.

Kindle Touch sentiment

Conversations around Kindle Touch are 85% positive, 11% more positive than Kindle Fire currently.

Can Amazon Kindle compete with Apple iPad? There are plenty of reasons why the Kindle Fire is no iPad killer. What do you think?

Netflix Inc.’s move to separate its movie-streaming business and its DVD-by-mail service failed to soothe many customers’ anger over the company’s recent price increase. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced the split in a blog post Sunday night, saying the move was the impetus for a recent price increase that outraged customers and sent the company’s stock price plummeting. He apologized for not having given the explanation sooner.

Some are already saying Netflix is doomed. The future lies in streaming, which make Netflix’s core strengths — the DVD library and its logistics — irrelevant. And it’s competing against massive companies, including Apple and Amazon.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

Netflix sentiment trend

Negative chatter, which was already steadily increasing since July thanks to Netflix previous price adjustments, has now surpassed positive chatter for the first time.

Netflix conversation topic cloud

Qwikster, the new name of a spin-off company Netflix created to handle all its DVD-by-mail service, is currently being mentioned in 36% of all Netflix conversations, and is 81% negative.

The move highlights the challenges facing even successful companies as they navigate the transition from old media to new media. Will you continue to use Netflix and/or Quikster?

Best Buy, the world’s largest electronics chain, reported a 30% drop in quarterly profit and saw its stock decline after saying sales at its U.S. stores dropped for the fifth-consecutive quarter. Shares reached their lowest level since December 2008.

CEO Brian Dunn still sees the company’s mixture of online and store retailing as a winning scenario for the long haul. “There are still things in the physical world that are going to be important: expert advice and the ability to see and touch the latest tablets,” Dunn said.

Are we seeing a trend in the decline of brick and mortar businesses? Can Best Buy compete with websites like Amazon.com which offer tax free purchases and deep discounts?

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations around Best Buy online.

Best Buy buzz

Best Buy mentions online have decreased nearly 700% over the last year.

Best Buy sentiment

Conversations around Best Buy have consistently been an average of more than 80% positive over the last year. The word ‘price’ has appeared in an average of 33% of conversations and has been 85% positive.

Content distribution

Best Buy has a nice mix of mentions via both blogs and Twitter — more than 30% of Best Buy mentions came via blogs. Interestingly, 76% of Best Buy mentions this year came from men. Maybe targeting more women could help Best Buy moving forward?

Ad Age posted an interesting article Wednesday about all of the key executives running Facebook who used to work at Google. In fact, an estimated 358 current Facebook employees (out of 3,600) used to work at Google.

Perception is that Google has peaked and is headed for decline. And, according to the article, Google’s 26,000-person workforce creates the kind of bureaucratic slog that deprives creative minds of oxygen, forcing entrepreneurial execs to run for a breath of fresh air. The Googlers who run Facebook know the enemy all too well. Is Google primed for a fall?

We used Social Radar to measure chatter around Google and Facebook over the past 3 years.

Google vs. Facebook chatter

Our query produced interesting results. Since July 1, 2008, Google chatter has steadily decreased, while Facebook chatter has steadily increased.

With Google’s Eric Schmidt admitting at this week’s D9 tech conference in Los Angeles that as CEO he “screwed up” and was too busy to do anything about social media as Google’s CEO.

Google launched their +1 buttons for recommended content across the web today. But the +1 button only shows up for signed-in users of Google.com and only pulls social graphs from Buzz, Reader, Talk and Gmail. Until Google pulls in Facebook friends and Twitter followers, will the +1 button help them gain any traction?

Amazon.com’s one-day, 99-cent promotion of Lady Gaga’s highly anticipated second studio album, “Born This Way,” resulted in downloading delays on the Internet retailer’s website due to high volume, the company said Monday.

Amazon thanked users for their patience on its website and on Twitter. Consumers who ordered “Born This Way” on Monday would get the full album for the promotional price, a spokesman confirmed.

Amazon is buying “Born This Way” at the full wholesale price, around $9, from Lady Gaga’s recorded-music distributor and absorbing the cost of the discount. ”Born This Way” costs $11.99 or $15.99 on Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store, depending on whether buyers opt for the regular album or a deluxe configuration that includes eight extra songs.

Amazon sentiment

Conversations around Amazon spiked to 96% positive today.

iTunes vs. Amazon mentions within Gaga or Born This Way chatter

The promotion did seem to generate some buzz for Amazon. Amazon was mentioned in nearly 12% of all conversations around Gaga or “Born This Way” online yesterday.

Music distribution executives say that most weeks, Apple commands 90% or more of paid digital music downloads, while Amazon’s share of that market is typically under 10%. Keep an eye on sales figures next week to find out if the promo and increased buzz helped Amazon’s sales vs. iTunes.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Google is unveiling a new online music service similar to a service recently launched by Amazon.com in a move that escalates the battle to create the next generation of Internet businesses for storing and listening to music. The services enable users to store music libraries on the companies’ servers and access them from a variety of devices via the Internet, rather than on a given PC — known as cloud computing.

Google, like Amazon, hasn’t secured licenses from the four major recorded-music companies. Users of the service are expected to be able to listen to songs they have uploaded to the service in a so-called streaming mode but won’t be able to download the files themselves.

The hope in the music industry is that Apple will launch its competing service at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June and make the Google and Amazon offerings look shabby by comparison, thus forcing Amazon and Google to pay the licensing rates the labels are asking.

Google, Amazon & Apple mentions within music conversations

Google was mentioned within 20% of all music conversations yesterday.

Google music sentiment

Conversations around Google’s new music service have been 70% positive over the last two days. Labels were mentioned in 11% of those conversations, and the mentions were 73% negative.

Content distribution by category

Interestingly, 63% of Google music conversations have been via Twitter, while 74% of Amazon music conversations have been via blog.