Sneaker fanatics have been sleeping on the streets for days to snap up Nike’s newest item: a $220 glow-in-the-dark shoe: The Foamposite Galaxy.

The hype around the Galaxy Faomposites has made it one of the most anticipated sneaker releases in the past decade. The shoes graced the front cover of the Daily News, one of New York city’s most read newspapers. The shoes caused riots at a Florida mall Foot Locker this morning and bidding became frantic on eBay — as of this morning, a pair listed on eBay was up to $70,000.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

Galaxy Foamposite buzz

Galaxy Foamposite mentions skyrocketed more than 14,000% this month. Foamposite chatter surpassed Air Jordan mentions, which are historically the most hyped shoe released. The Air Jordan 4 “Cement” version was just re-released last weekend for the first time in 13 years.

Even though the Air Jordan 4s were re-released the day after Michael Jordan’s birthday, the Galaxy Foamposite re-release is generating more buzz. Penny Hardaway, who was the signature Nike athlete for the foamposite shoe and former player for the Orlando Magic, said Nike timed the re-release to coincide with this weekend’s NBA All-Star game in Orlando.

According to @nikestore, Nike would not be releasing the Foamposites online due to extremely limited quantities. Is Nike the best brand at creating buzz around product launches?

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.

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

Once again, Twitter holds on to the top spot. MySpace jumped 17 spots, mostly due to MySpace’s new mail service. Amazon jumped 6 spots to #16 from chatter regarding the acquisition of Zappos. eBay jumped 8 spots and Skype joined the list this month due to a legal battle that may threaten the future of Skype.

There were some other surprises this month as well. The LG Chocolate helped LG jump 11 spots. Starbucks joined the list thanks to their Free Pastry day spreading lots of chatter. BlackBerry jumped 15 spots thanks in part to rumors about the new BlackBerry Storm as well as their new app store. Nintendo, Wii, Sony, Playstation and XBox all dropped this month after buzz from the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) subsided.

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.