After spending nearly $10 billion within a few weeks on acquisitions, we decided to run some social analysis on Intel.

On August 19, Intel acquired security-software maker McAfee for $7.68 billion in the largest deal of their 42-year history. Some questioned the decision, but Intel executives argued growing security dangers require new measures and described the acquisition as an essential step to design chips and other hardware that can protect systems better than software alone.

Less than two weeks later, Intel acquired chip maker Infineon’s Wireless Solutions Business on August 29 for $1.4 billion. The Infineon acquisition enables Intel to expand the company’s reach beyond the core PC and server businesses and into the mobile and wireless markets.

Overall chatter around Intel for the month of August 2010 peaked on 8/19, the day of the McAfee acquisition. Chatter on 8/19 was 68% higher than the day of the Infineon announcement 8/29.

Here’s a look at the overall sentiment trend chart for the month:

Interestingly, sentiment on August 19 was 85% positive, while sentiment on August 29 was only 70% positive (although Intel announced on August 28 that it cut its third-quarter revenue forecast, citing weaker-than-expected consumer demand for personal computers in mature markets.)

Overall the word McAfee was mentioned much more frequently in Intel posts than the word Infineon. The word McAfee appeared in nearly 70% of Intel related chatter on August 19.

The topic cloud for the month of August reveals generally positive conversation overall. Do you think these moves were wise for Intel?

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.

Rank	Chg	Brand
1		Twitter
2	(+1)	Facebook
3	(-1)	iPhone
4		Google
5	(+1)	Obama
6	(-1)	YouTube
7	(+1)	Apple
8	(-1)	Mac
9		iPod
10		MySpace
11		Microsoft
12	(+11)	LG
13	(+6)	NFL
14	(-1)	Windows
15	(-3)	Yahoo
16	(+1)	Fox
17	(+13)	MTV
18	(-4)	Disney
19	(-4)	BlackBerry
20	(-4)	Playstation
21	(+5)	AT&T
22	(-1)	BBC
23	(-5)	XBox
24	(-2)	Amazon
25	(-5)	Sony
26	(+3)	CNN
27	(+1)	Wii
28	(-2)	Nokia
29	(-2)	Linux
30	(+2)	Starbucks
31		eBay
32	(+5)	Skype
33	(-9)	Firefox
34	(-1)	ABC
35		Oprah
36		ESPN
37	(-3)	Ford
38	(-3)	Dell
39		UPS
40		Samsung
41	(+3)	NBA
42		Intel
43		Nike
44	(-6)	Wikipedia
45	(-4)	MLB
46	(-1)	Canon
47	(-4)	Marvel
48		CBS
49	(-1)	BMW
50	(-3)	Nintendo

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.