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.

The June 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 June 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during May 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 held on to the top spot, though once again trending down this month. iPhone jumped two spots to #2 overall and Apple jumped three spots to #6 thanks to buzz around the iPhone 3G S release.

Firefox jumped 10 spots thanks to increased chatter leading up to its new Firefox 3.5 release, which was downloaded more than a million times within a few hours.

XBox jumped 5 spots to #11 overall after the Project Natal announcement at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Surprisingly, with both the Project Natal and Bing search engine announcements this month, overall Microsoft buzz only increased one spot to #9 overall.

CNN jumped 13 spots, due in large part to a steep surge surrouding the news of Michael Jackson’s death. MLB jumped eight spots as the baseball season heated up in the month of June.

Finally, HTC joined the Top 50 this month, with talk about its new widget-based HTC Hero Android smartphone announcement.

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.

We received a lot of feedback on yesterday’s Social Radar Top 50 (March 2009) post and wanted to provide some additional thoughts. A brand is a promise; a collective of perceptions. Our Social Radar Top 50 Social Brands list was calculated based on overall conversation volume, including millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts. To determine our top 50 brands, we aggregated a massive list of thousands of the words and brands on the web during March 2009, then conducted further analysis to rank the results. Our list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during March 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

We did not base our list on number of searches, which you could easily do using Google Trends. We measured conversations and web chatter. If you’re a brand manager, do you want to know who’s searching for your brand? Absolutely. Do you also want to know how many people are talking about your product online? Absolutely. If you need to do some home repair, say, fix your cabinets, you’ll probably start with a Google search. But are you going to blog about your experience? Probably not unless it’s extraordinarily good or bad.

We also did not base our list on revenues. The Business Week / Interbrand list of top global brands for 2008 is evaluated based on how much the brand is likely to earn for the company in the future. Interbrand uses a combination of analysts’ projections, company financial documents, and its own qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at a net present value of those earnings.

Coke and McDonald’s are both on Interbrand’s top 10 list, but both brands were outside of our top 50. Social media doesn’t necessarily correlate to market share. How often are you blogging about the Coke you bought from the vending machine? On the other hand, technology is always advancing and people often chat or post about new updates and features. Check out the chart below comparing chatter for Coke, McDonald’s and iPhone throughout March 2009.

There are many reasons why products have large market share. Microsoft products are still predominately used in many corporate settings, and in some cases employees at those corporations might prefer to use Apple products but aren’t given the choice. Apple’s market share has increased dramatically in the last few years. Who knows if Apple will surpass Microsoft in the future, but they are generating more buzz than Microsoft on the web thanks to passionate Mac and iPhone users.

Social media is evolving. Companies are just now beginning to hire social media strategists to interact with consumers. Social media is still a low priority for many large corporations because of lack of perceived ROI. So they are still experimenting with ways to become part of the conversation. Companies that can create real-time interaction and involvement with their customers will be best prepared to succeed in the new media world. How can companies capitalize on or increase online buzz? Will it translate to increased revenue in the future?

Update 04/08/09: For more details on how we determine our ranking, view The new rules of branding

If sheer volume of conversation is any indication, Twitter is the hottest brand in the market. Twitter dominates a tech-heavy list of brands in our March 2009 Social Radar Top 50. The Social Radar Top 50 measures the most social brands by the number of unique topics of conversation. These brands are top of mind for consumers and bloggers today — Social Radar determined rankings according to the number of individual websites with at least one post about each brand to accurately capture the brand’s reach across the web.

The list below is based on overall conversation volume through the month of March 2009, including blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts. The +/- number represents the ranking change since February 2009.

For the full March 2009 list, download the PDF. Be sure to visit our Social Radar Top 50 page for access to each month’s results.

Questions? Comments? Tweet me: @adamcoomes