Last week, the world received news of Tiger Woods being hospitalized with serious injury from a car accident. The world felt sorry for Tiger, wished him well, and waited in anticipation for news of his recovery. This week, the world has a different perspective. As details began to spill, the world had learned that his car accident was the result of Tiger fleeing from his wife as she chased after him, bashing his car with a golf club from news of his unfaithful behavior. How did the public react? How has the sentiment changed? Let’s do some research.

First, let’s compare the topics of conversation around Tiger Woods before news broke of his alleged affairs.

Tiger Woods Topics (Before News Broke of Affairs):

Tiger Woods Topics (After News Broke of Affairs):

Tiger Woods Sentiment Before Accident:

Tiger Woods Sentiment After News Of Affairs:

We then go on to measure which topics were being discussed the most around Tiger Woods chatter. Below are some of the topics we analyzed. We included some of the hot topics, including the names of potential mistresses being mentioned.

We also wanted to take a quick peek at the Nike. Let’s see if there’s any real effect or association of this negativity with their brand.

Tiger Woods mentions within Nike chatter

Nike Sentiment within Tiger Woods conversations

Nike BEFORE:

Nike AFTER:

Nike’s negativity did increase this past week, but not significantly. We can certainly conclude that Nike’s brand wasn’t severely affected by this mess. However, Tiger Woods’ brand certainly has been. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how this continues to affect his brand in the coming weeks.

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 April 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 April 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during April 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 once again dominates the Top 50 list in April 2009. Already the hottest brand on our March list by a wide margin, Twitter accumulated an additional 10% in chatter in April.

Content sharing website Digg joined the Top 50 this month thanks in part to the April 2 launch of the DiggBar. Enterprise software company Oracle also joined the list with an increase in chatter due to its April 20 acquisition of Sun Microsystems. And as the NBA and NHL Playoffs heated up in April, the NHL joined the Top 50 while the NBA jumped 9 spots.

Dell dropped 23 spots this month as buzz around the March announcement of the new Dell Adamo faded. Kindle also dropped out of the Top 50 as hype around the Kindle 2 subsided.

Conversely, CNN jumped up 10 spots thanks to the race to a million Twitter followers with Ashton Kutcher. IBM also jumped four spots thanks to increasing focus on social media.

View the list below, or download the full 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.