Methodology

All research data was conducted by immediate future in May 2008. 

Share of voice analysis

Site search functions were utilised to determine the number of times a brand was mentioned on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us and Twitter, in both forums and blogs.

Previously, the Blogosphere figure was calculated as an average, based on results generated by Technorati and Google Blog Search. This year, however, the figure was calculated from Google Blog Search alone, as, at the time of compiling this report, Technorati appeared to be returning inconsistent figures in its search results.

This year's research also includes a search on forums to show brands' share of voice in this sector. These figures were generated by the Forum search engine, Board Reader, which analyses threads on forum boards.

With the rise in popularity of microblogging, seen through the success of tools such as Twitter, immediate future considered the inclusion of an analysis of this form of Social media essential for the purposes of this research. Twitter was chosen, as the most popular network of its kind, at the time of conducting the research.

Using the site search function on each of the relevant social media sites, immediate future calculated mentions for each brand. These were then ranked across all social media types to give a final figure which determined the brand's position in the IF rank.

(Please note, at the time the research was conducted, Social bookmarking tool, Ma.gnolia, was experiencing technical difficulties and was therefore not included in the study.)

 Social network group sentiment analysis

To gain a measure of the overall sentiment of brand-focused Groups set up on Social networks, brand name searches were conducted across three major social network sites: Facebook, Bebo and MySpace.

The top 20 brand-focused groups from each social network were reviewed to determine whether their overall tone was positive, negative or neutral.

In addition to the above, a sentiment value from Twitter was calculated by using a Twitter sentiment tool. This was then divided into positive, negative and neutral sentiment.

The figures for each brand were derived from results across all social network types. The number of positive, negative and neutral groups, along with brand mentions, was then plotted into a graph for comparison.