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Posts Tagged ‘apple’

End Of An Era: Talk and Tribute to Steve Jobs Through Social Media

Last night I was sitting down to write a blog post about the sentiment around Apple’s iPhone event that happened on Tuesday (which wasn’t nearly as bad as you would have thought by looking at the tweets I saw in my stream). But just as I sat down to write I took a quick peek at my Twitter stream and couldn’t believe what I saw. Steve Jobs, founder and long time CEO of Apple and inspiration to geeks everywhere had passed away. I didn’t know if it was one of those Twitter rumors or not, but a quick visit to apple.com confirmed that for the second time in almost as many months I’d have to do a last minute change on what I would write about because of news about Steve Jobs.

I saw this news just after 8pm(EST) last night after not seeing anything on the internet for the past hour and a half. By then, Twitter was already exploding with people talking about the untimely passing of the tech mogul. It took a little while for the news to sink in and I spent a bit of time reading what people were saying throughout my various social networks before I decided that I need to start tracking this through our Sysomos software. At 8:30pm(EST) I used MAP and did a search for the following terms that I thought would show up or already saw people using: “steve jobs” OR stevejobs OR ripsteve OR ripjobs OR ripstevejobs OR #stevejobs OR #ripsteve OR #ripjobs OR #ripstevejobs OR #stevejobs. At this time, which was still shortly after the news broke I was already able to find 1,081 blog posts, 1,790 online news articles, 618 forum posts and 249,042 tweets containing my search terms yesterday.

It’s important that I point out at this time that while the tweets were starting to pour in about Jobs passing, a lot of those blog posts and news articles at that time were still from a bit earlier in the day and were likely talking about Jobs in relation to the Apple iPhone event from the day before. I actually pulled up a buzzgraph at this time as well to see what all the talk was currently about and found that I was right, it was too soon for it all to be about Steve’s death. The following buzzgraph shows that talk at this time was still focused around iPhones, but it changed as time went on.

I decided to keep following how the talk of this progressed as more and more people heard the news and took to social media to talk about it with their friends and peers. By 9:30pm(EST) I found that all the mediums had started to really pick up and tak about Steve Jobs. At this time there was 1,905 blog posts, 3,836 online news articles, 1,483 forum posts and 570,414 tweets.

I then continued to track the numbers of Steve Jobs talk through the night at different intervals. Half an hour after my last check, at 10pm(EST) numbers had risen to 2,298 blog posts, 4,752 online news articles, 2,156 forum posts and 636,924 tweets.

And through the night, numbers looked like the following:

Midnight(EST)

1am(EST)

4am(EST)

8:30am(EST)

I took my final screen grab at 9:30am(EST) this morning. By this time, everyone that was sleeping when the news first broke would have been awake and heard about Jobs. At this time there was 13,611 blog posts, 33,484 online news articles, 27,832 forum posts and 2.5 million tweets about Steve Jobs in about a 24 hour time span. This is very reminiscent to how talk of Bin Laden’s death spread through social media.

At this time as well, our buzzgraph which shows words being used in conjunction with our search terms had also significantly changed. While the buzzgraph I saw at 8:30pm was still focused on words that reflected Tuesday’s iPhone announcement, this morning it was now filled with words of people talking about their sadness of Jobs death an stories and accomplishments of his life.

I also took a snapshot of where all the tweets were coming from. By just taking a quick look at this map it’s easy to see that Steve Jobs had an effect on people around the globe and these people had taken to social media to talk about it.

Steve Jobs was a visionary that changed the world of technology forever. Without his iPod, I don’t think that the MP3 would have caught on as quickly as it did. Even people who could be considered to be Jobs’ main competitors knew how much he had changed the world and they weren’t hesitant to pay their respects to the man. Google put a very minimalistic tribute to him right on their main search page. Blackberry (RIM) sent out a tweet with their condolences and even Bill Gates, who some may have considered Jobs’ number one competitor in life, wrote a short piece on his personal blog to pay his respect.

 

 

It’s no question that today is a sad day in the world of tech. Steve jobs was a visionary and a leader in the industry. He will be very missed by many people, myself included, but if the numbers that showed talk about him in only about 12 hours are any indication, he will not be forgotten.

By Sheldon Levine - October 6th, 2011 - 14 Comments »
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Posted in Events, Samples, Social Media, Technology

Steve Jobs Steps Down, Geeks Everywhere Cry

I was all prepared to sit down and write a blog post about how quickly talk of yesterday’s earthquake along the North American east coast spread, but sometimes something comes up that’s just way more important. That something happened mere hours ago when it was announced that Steve Jobs will be stepping down from his role as Apple’s CEO.

There’s never been any doubt about Jobs’ health before as he’s been known to take extended leaves of absence, but this time seems a little more serious as he’s actually given up his title as CEO. He may not be completely out of the picture however as he said he will be staying on as a chairman, but what that means is anyone’s guess. Taking his place as CEO will be Tim Cook, who was previously the COO for Apple.

Using MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics platform, I decided to take a snap shot of what was being said through the world of social media about the big news. In just a few hours since the announcement was made (I’m sure it’s even more as I write this and will more than double by the time you read this) I found 1,761 blog posts, 2,854 online news articles, 755 forum posts and 187,928 tweets talking about Steve Jobs.

The tweets I found were coming in from across the globe, as illustrated in the heat map below.

A buzzgraph, which shows us the words most used in conjunction with my search terms, seems to tell the entire story. In the center we find the word “resign” and “resignation” which is really the heart of the story. Then, all around we can see words that tell the story of Jobs’ time with Apple including “contributed”, “innovation”, and “success”. Then we can see words that talk about his illness including “pancreatic” reffering to his cancer and “unfortunate”. Finally we can also see words that talk of Apple’s future, which include Jobs’ “successor” Tim “Cook” and  his new role as “chairman”.

People really loved Steve Jobs and a look at the sentiment around the story shows that people are upset at the news.

Finally, I decided to pull out a few conversations from different mediums so you can get a feel for what is being said.

Blogs

Twitter

Online news articles

 

UPDATE: The numbers listed above were taken at about 9:15pm(EST) last night (August 24). As predicted, news about Steve Jobs has been heavily passed around and at 9:15am(EST) this morning I found 12,612 blogs posts, 16,025 online news articles, 7,837 forum posts and 486,486 tweets all mentioning Steve Jobs since the story broke.

By Sheldon Levine - August 25th, 2011 - No Comments »
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Posted in Samples, Social Media

Will iOS5 Lead to a Next Twitter Explosion?

Last week at Apple’s WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) the company showcased their lasest version of iOS, which is the operating system for iPhones, iPads and iTouch devices. While the new operating system toutes many new features compared to it’s predecessors, one of the most interesting is that Twitter will be fully integrated throughout Apple’s stock apps on the devices. This means that i-device users will be able to easily share their thoughts, links, pictures and more seamlessly to the mico-blogging platform.

Last week, Mark Evans looked at how Twitter is still a niche as 92% of people over the age of 12 claim to know about the service, but only 8% actually use the social network.  No reasons were given as to why people were or were not using Twitter. One reason why people may not be though, is that they just don’t have time to add that something extra into their already busy day. Some people may use it, but don’t understand the nuances of tweeting out links and pictures. But, could having the service so easily accessible from their smartphone change that?

Rather than having to have a couple of different apps on their phone to tweet, to share pictures, to shorten links so they can fit into the 140 character limit, etc, Apple will now make that all easy to do without having to have a multitude of apps to aide that.

Not to mention that the iPhone has a pretty hefty market share on smartphones, making it even easier to get Twitter into the hands of more users. According to eMarketer earlier this year, they projected iPhones to hold about 30% of the US smartphone market share for the next two years.

The question now becomes, with Apple putting Twitter into the hands of so many people and making it super easy to use through their mobile device, will Twitter experience another growth explosion towards the end of this year when iOS5 becomes available to the public?

By Sheldon Levine - June 14th, 2011 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media, Technology

Big Announcements From Apple Means Big Talk Across Social Media

Earlier this week Steve Jobs took the stage at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference. These moments are the ones that Apple fanboys (and fangirls) live for, because every time Jobs steps in front of a large crowd it’s to announce something new from Apple. This time Jobs came out at the WWDC to announce three new things; iOS5, Lion and iCloud.

Not an Apple fanboy (or girl)? Allow me to catch you up. iOS5 is a new and improved operating system for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. Lion is a brand new operating system for Mac computers with all kinds of new bells and whistles. iCloud is a service that allows Apples users to wirelessly store and sync information to be accessed across all of a persons Apple devices.

If you haven’t heard of these new Apple products you must not have been on the Internet for the past week, because there has been a lot of talk about these things. I decided to take a peek with MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics platform, at just what was being said. A quick look for the terms “WWDC” and “World Wide Developers Conference” over the past week showed 31,698 blog posts, 10,566 news articles, 18,411 forum posts and 131,421 tweets about the conference.

A look at our popularity graph shows that talk was starting before the conference actually did. This was mostly people making their predictions about what exactly Jobs would announce. The most conversation took place on the day of Jobs’ keynote as people were live tweeting and blogging his address and then followed by everyone doing their own recaps and discussing the new products and features.

A look at our buzzgraph shows that Twitter seemed to be mostly used to live tweet what was being announced as we can see the words “I’m” “watch”ing the “keynote.” We can also see that most of the live tweets were about the new products as “iOS5,” “iCloud” and “Lion” have the strongest connections with “keynote.”

Meanwhile, over on blogs, it looks as if people were able to go into more detail than 140 characters about all the announcements. Again we can see the product names being mentioned, but we can also see more details such as “app,” “newsstand” (Apples new way to subscribe to and download digital magazines), “sync” and “Twitter” (which has been deeply ingrained into iOS5).

Two things I can say for sure about about a big Steve Job announcement is that:

1) When Jobs makes an announcement the whole world gets interested, as you can see bellow from our geo-location map of where tweets were originating from.

And 2) People get very excited about what he announces, as you can also clearly see by looking at sentiment around the WWDC announcements bellow.

Finally, to get an idea of which product announced seemed most interesting to the public I compared talk of each product across all social media channels to see which one was getting the most. While I was personally most excited about the new iOS5, it seems that iCloud seemed to have peaked the interest of people most with it taking up more than half of all conversations about the announcements.

Were you one of the people who contributed to the conversation? I know I was.

By Sheldon Levine - June 9th, 2011 - No Comments »
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Posted in Samples, Social Media

Post-Jobs, Will Apple Get More Social?

The extent of Steve Jobs’ latest leave of absence from Apple is a mystery other than it will last until at least June. There has been rampant chatter about what the lack of Jobs at the helm means for Apple’s future, particularly when many Apple watchers are starting to ask what’s next after the phenomenal success of the MacBoo, iPod and iPhone.

If Jobs stays on the sidelines for a long period of time, another question is whether Apple’s approach to social media will change. While most major consumer-facing companies have charged into social media, Apple has taken, at best, a tepid approach.

In the Apple world, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube have little significance – a contrast to the tsunami of activity about Apple within the social milieu.

While it might be unfair to describe Apple’s take as social media as disdain, it has definitely not taken by social media. This shouldn’t be a surprise for a company that is surprisingly mediocre at media and blogger relations.

To Apple (and Jobs) the marketing and advertising are the products; Apple make ‘em, and the world generates the buzz by talking about them. Why would Apple get into social media when there are thousands of people doing a great job already on its behalf?

Apple’s biggest step into social media was the launch last year of Ping, a music social network that hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm. You could argue that part of Ping’s modest acceptance is that social media isn’t within Apple’s core DNA.

If Jobs, however, is on the sidelines for an extended period of time, maybe this could create an opportunity for the executives running the show to embrace social media – even in a modest way that Jobs would never have considered.

While no one expects Apple to jump enthusiastically on the social media bandwagon, there is no doubt it could by a dynamic and effective player given the passion of its consumers and their willingness to engage about all things Apple.

By Mark Evans - January 19th, 2011 - 1 Comment »
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Posted in Social Media

Is Social Media For Everyone?

I was reading a blog post recently by Valeria Maltoni (aka ConversationAgent) about Apple and its army of customer evangelists who enthusiastically spread the gospel about new products and genius of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Part of Apple’s ability to activate and engage customer evangelists is an aggressive and creative advertising effort that saw the company spend nearly $500-million in 2008.

What’s interesting about Apple and its ability to generate amazing amounts of conversations is how it’s not really using social media at a time when many consumer-focused companies are scrambling to get on the bandwagon. Apple seems to be saying that it doesn’t really need to use social media because it has millions of customers using social media on its behalf. In many ways, Apple has been able to outsource social media.

It begs the question: Are there some or many consumer-facing companies don’t need to use social media?

If your customers are using social media to spread the word about your products and services, provide customer service, answer questions and build the brand’s presence, does it make sense for some companies to stay out of the social fray?

Instead, they can feed the machine by generating content that evangelists (and non-evangelists) can use when blogging, tweeting, Facebook updating, etc.

The reality is Apple may be an exception to the rule because social media makes sense for many companies as part of their communications, marketing and sales programs. Then again, it raises the issue of whether social media is for everyone at a time when social media is being trumpeted as a cure-all or silver bullet.

By Mark Evans - February 3rd, 2010 - 6 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Why Apple Doesn’t Use Social Media

TechCrunch reported yesterday that Apple is starting to increase its use of Twitter.

For any other world-class, consumer-facing company, this news would probably have been met with a shrug. But for Apple, this is major news because Apple hasn’t embraced social media, even though it’s all rage from a communications, marketing and sales perspective. Apple, which has always marched to the beat of its own drum, is not a social media user, aside from a few low-profile Twitter accounts such as iTunesTrailers

So why is that? Why is Apple sitting on the social media sidelines, while the rest of the world jumps on the bandwagon?

Perhaps the biggest explanation may be that Apple doesn’t need to do social media itself – not when you’ve got millions of consumers more than happy to blog, tweet, video and podcast about their love for Apple and Steve Jobs.

In a sense, Apple has outsourced social media.

Another reason may be that Apple’s marketing campaigns are so good that social media is unnecessary. A case in point are the popular Apple vs. Windows TV ads, which have attracted a lot of word-of-mouth and YouTube views. Again, no need to do social media itself.

And for all the talk about brands having conversation with their customers and potential customers, Apple is having conversations but in different ways. Jobs’ annual keynotes at Macworld is the biggest conversation in the high-world. Steve talks, and then everyone talks back in social and traditional media.

Another venue where Apple is having conversations are the Apple Stores where you can walk in, and have a conversation with a real person as opposed an avatar.

Maybe Apple is the exception to the rule when it comes to social media. Maybe Apple doesn’t need social media or, at least, to do it much itself.

Why do you think?

By Mark Evans - October 21st, 2009 - 3 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Focus On: Apple’s Snow Leopard

A week ago, Apple launched Snow Leopard, the much-anticipated upgrade of its increasingly popular operating system. The general reaction appeared to be positive even though Snow Leopard does not offer as many dramatic changes as its predecessor, Leopard.

To really get a handle how Snow Leopard is doing, we used MAP (our social media analytics service) to see who has been talking about Snow Leopard and what they’re thinking.

In general, Snow Leopard has been enthusiastically received with a 83% of the conversations being favorable – 44% positive, 39% neutral and 17% negative.

sentiment

In terms of the most prominent terms shown in the BuzzGraph below, “10.6″ was the most popular. This is the current version of the Mac operating system.

There were also strong links to “Mac”, “update” and “compatible”, which reflects the conversations about some applications not working with Snow Leopard. Information Week has an article on 100 applications that are not compatible with Snow Leopard.

buzzgraph.jsp

We also look at where the conversations within the blogosphere were happening. Not surprisingly, nearly one-third of all activity took place in the U.S. – with a lot of activity in California, Texas and New York. Outside the U.S., 6.3% of the conversations took place in Italy and Germany respectively, 5.9% in Spain, 5.1% in the U.K. and 3.7% in Japan.

map

We also checked out what people were saying about Snow Leopard on Twitter. Like blogs, the leading term was “Mac” but there were also strong links to “fixes” and “Flash”.

There was also a strong link to “ow.ly”, a URL shortening service used by many Twitter users. What’s interesting is Twitter’s default URL shortening service is bit.ly, suggesting there have been a lot of Twitter users writing tweets with tools and services other than Twitter.com.

Twitter buzzgraph

By Mark Evans - September 11th, 2009 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media, Technology

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