Web 2.0 Giant vs. Manufacturing Behemoth
by Kimling L. in Meltwater Culture Aug.28.2009. 3:44 pm   [PST]

Out of curiosity, I recently ran a quick analysis via Meltwater News to see how frequently a new social networking company (Twitter) and a traditional corporation (General Motors) show up in the headlines. Each of these companies have experienced a meteoric rise in media attention, albeit for drastically different reasons. Would either one of these companies receive more headline coverage in both social media (blogs) and traditional online media?

The results are interesting. From March – August 2009, Twitter showed up in blog headlines nearly 3 times more than auto manufacturing giant, GM. However, in traditional online news media, it was nearly the complete inverse.

If you think about it, it makes sense. Twitter (a social media company) received the most coverage in its respective industry channel. General Motors, the largest US automaker, obtained most of its online coverage through conventional news sources.

The question is:

IF/when Twitter becomes an established mainstream company, will its coverage move towards traditional news media as opposed to blogs?

(please note the color changes between the two charts)

twitter-and-gm-headlines-blogs

twitter-and-gm-headlines-in-news

  • Erik Emri

    I think that the balance between social media and traditional online media will become more balanced. The hype will be less, but people will still be tweeting about companies (perhaps customer support related things, product ideas, or general rants), and traditional media will start looking at some of the things that are often covered in news: people, financing and investor related things, etc. But being a social media related company (and particularly the medium for a large part of social media), the blogs part will remain high. I think :-)

  • Twitter Trackbacks for Web 2.0 Giant vs. Manufacturing Behemoth [meltwaternewstalk.com] on Topsy.com

    Web 2.0 Giant vs. Manufacturing Behemoth meltwaternewstalk.com/web-20-giant-vs-manufacturing-behemoth – view page – cached Former TV news reporter who made the jump to Corporate Communications at — From the page.

  • http://www.meltwater.com Sahil Mansuri

    That is really interesting investigation KL! Twitter should focus its energies on traditional media, seeing as to how there cannot be a conversation about social media that does not involve Twitter and Facebook as being the two key players. (No discredit to Wikis and Youtube). However, with questions around the longevity of Twitter as perhaps being “just a fad”, a bit of intellectual “street cred” from top publications across mainstream media could be beneficial to help dispel such notions.

  • JC

    That’s pretty cool analysis Kimling. Regarding the colors of your graphs: I am pretty sure you can click the color box next to the category (ie (“Twitter Headlines in News”) and change the color so that the 2 graphs would be congruent.

    Keep up these interesting posts. Intriguing!

  • http://twitter.com/kimling Kimling

    JC– Thanks for the Meltwater News tip and for the feedback. Much appreciated.