The 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 all of 2008 and 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

This year has certainly been interesting. Several new brands made their way to the mainstream making our 2009 Top 50 list, such as Kindle, Amazon’s hit e-book reader, and Android, Google’s mobile OS that is spreading onto smartphones like wildfire. Interestingly, Samsung and Nokia took a big hit this year, as sexier smartphones such as iPhones and Android-powered devices from HTC and Motorola gain more attention.

The list certainly shows that 2009 was the year of Social Media. Twitter moved ahead of Google to take the number 1 spot, while Facebook and MySpace made significant leaps over big brands as well. Most video game related brands were down this year as well, including Sony, Wii, Xbox, and Nintendo. It also appears TV brands all jumped this year including Disney, MTV, Fox, BBC, CNN, ESPN, and ABC.

Download the PDF:

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.

Social Radar Screenshot:

Questions or comments? Twitter me @adamcoomes.

As everything on the internet becomes social, is it only inevitable that all of your personal information and private life matters will become available as a public offering? Would you give your 5,000 Twitter followers access to your checking account statements? There’s a new social network in town, in the form of a microblog, that is positioning their service as “A fun and easy way to see and discuss the things people are buying.” Blippy is stirring up some heated discussions on the internet and we used Social Radar to see what people are saying about this new social platform.

Blippy launched their private beta last week and got instant negative reactions as news spread through coverage from popular blogs TechCrunch and the NY Times.

With just over 30% of all related posts emitting negative emotion people don’t seem to think that Blippy is a very good basis for a microblog.

As Blippy is still only in beta, it will be interesting to see what happens as more and more people gain access to the tool. Have any of you tried it yet? What do you think of Blippy? Let us know!

The Verizon Wireless Droid launched last week and was quick to gain buzz on the internet as consumers got a hold of their very own mini-machines. The Droid gained momentum closer to its release date as numerous reviews, tweets and comments poured into social media.

Taking a deeper look into the content of these posts, we are able to pin-pont key concerns that users associate with Verizon’s new product. The fact that the Droid is being offered at the reasonable price of $199 bodes well across the board.

Looking at this sentiment trend, we are able to see emotions mapped out over time. As expected, negativity climbed after phones went on sale and consumers were actually able to get their hands on the product. On a good note, things look to be calming down quickly, but, as usual, can be expected to fluctuate a long the way as more and more of these devices are disbursed.

Thinking about getting a Droid, but aren’t really sure? Social media has become a very useful product research outlet for many, and this next graph illustrates where the best places are to look for insight. Nearly half of the content related to the Droid is coming out of the social media world via blogs. If you’re looking for fast and to-the-point feedback, Droid conversations are sprouting up all over the Twitter network. Simply search Twitter for the #droid hashtag to see what people are saying or to speak your mind!

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 August 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 August 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during August 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 holds its reign at number 1 yet again. Disney jumps 9 spots and Marvel joins the list as Disney’s acquisition of Marvel made huge news at the end of the month. Playstation launched 11 spots due to the introduction of the PS3 Slim with its long-awaited price drop. Xbox 360 also made news with the announcement of a price drop, sneaking it up 3 spots.

Also worth mentioning, the build-up of chatter momentum for the upcoming NFL season rose NFL 13 spots. Firefox and NASA both take a dive as natural fallout from their big announcements last month: NASA’s 40 year celebration of Apollo 11 and Firefox’s version 3.5 update.

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.

Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest comedy about an Austrian fashion journalist, opened to $14.2 million last Friday night. Then, the movie experienced a drastic decline in sales between Friday and Saturday, causing it to fall as much as $20 million short of some expectations for opening weekend.

Many experts speculated that negative word-of-mouth caused the sharp sales decline for Brüno, as social media sites like Twitter are enabling word-of-mouth to affect releases instantly. Time magazine said Brüno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter, and that Friday is the new weekend when measuring box office success.

Brüno was a trending topic on Twitter throughout opening weekend. We decided to use Social Radar to analyze the sentiment of comments posted on Twitter throughout the last week.

Sentiment was overwhelmingly positive leading up to the opening, with more than 90% positive comments on July 6. But as the movie opening on July 10, the number of negative comments increased sharply, with almost 50% negative sentiment on opening weekend. Words like rotten, uncomfortable and gross appeared frequently throughout posts.

Twitter and other social media sites are empowering consumers to make more informed purchase decisions. With this new level of transparency and instant consumer reviews, product launches cannot hide behind marketing to tell the story.

As we discussed in our post about the angry United Airline customer who gained massive attention with his YouTube complaint, consumers are influencing each other directly more quickly and on a larger scale than ever before. How can companies maintain control of their brands in today’s transparent world?

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.

One of the biggest stories of the week has been Iranians’ use of social media to communicate with each other and the outside world during the Iran election crisis. Protesters used Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia and blogs to disseminate information and help people take action.

The Iran crisis has literally given journalistic power to the people, as individuals spread news of developing events in the country. Twitter users adopted the hashtag #CNNfail to proclaim that “new media” (individuals using Twitter) had provided better coverage than “old media” (CNN) throughout the early stages of the crisis.

We decided to use Social Radar to analyze and compare the reach of messages posted by individuals with low influence vs. high influence. Social Radar tracks influence based on the number of links to a specific blog or account. For example, most average Twitter users or bloggers would be considered low influence, while sites like Engadget or CNN would be considered high influence and major media news sources.

The chart below provides interesting results. We measured the number of posts over the last few weeks for low influencers vs. high influencers on the topic of Iran or Iran election. Iran election conversation among low influencers is spreading twice as quickly as conversation among high influencers. The Iran crisis has proven that individuals can report relevant news quickly. What does it mean for “old media” in the future? Will we continue to see more and more examples of individuals using social media to beat established journalists to news stories?

With all the hype surrounding the Facebook land grab, Facebook buzz surged late June 12 and early June 13. At 9 p.m. PST on June 12, Facebook usernames opened to the public enabling users to choose a vanity URL for their profile page.

Vanity URLs encourage sharing and increased activity on Facebook. Mashable reported that 200,000 users registered usernames within the first 3 minutes, and more than 1,000,000 users registered within the first hour. Will vanity URLs affect your interaction on Facebook?