Apple dominated the discussion in online social media when it comes to brands in 2008, taking three of the Top 10 most-talked about brands in the Vitrue 100 rankings, and four of the Top 20. The Vitrue 100 is a list from metrics company Vitrue that claims to anaylyze and rank what's being talked about in the exploding social networking world.
iPhone was ranked the #1 most talked about brand name in 2008, with Apple coming in at #3, iPod at #7, and Mac at #16. Microsoft, on the other hand, had its first appearance on the list at #5 with Xbox and #10 Microsoft. Perhaps surprisingly, or not, neither Zune nor Windows were ranked in the Top 100.
Apple also beat out such well-known brands as Coke (#22), NFL (#35), NBA (#29), Honda (#25), and even BlackBerry (#20).
The company uses proprietary data collection techniques to gather information on what is being said on what it describes as a, "variety of social networking, blogging, micro-blogging, photo and video sharing sites." The company excludes the brands of those companies running social networking sites (the company specified Google and FaceBook as examples of those brands excluded), focusing on companies that it said are using social networking sites.
The goal, according to Vitrue, "is to bring clarity and credibility to this emerging space. We know marketers need a way to measure success and create benchmarks to track their efforts over time, while our industry needs directional trends to help define who is doing well and who can do better engaging their consumers online."
You can find the full list at Vitrue's Web site.
The Top 20 in the Vitrue 100:
- iPhone
- CNN
- Apple
- Disney
- Xbox
- Starbucks
- iPod
- MTV
- Sony
- Dell
- Microsoft
- Ford
- Nintendo
- Target
- PlayStation
- Mac
- Turner
- Hewlett-Packard
- Fox News
- BlackBerry