• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, January 7, 2011

Despite inroads made by Android on its turf last year, the iPhone was the top social brand in 2010 for the third consecutive year, according to ViTrue's annual ranking of brands based on their prevalance in online conversations. Rounding out the top five were BlackBerry, Disney, and yes, Android, followed by the iPad. With "Apple" at No. 7, the tech giant had three brands in the top ten.

Consumer electronics brands as a whole made up nearly a third (30%) of the The ViTrue 100, followed by fashion and retail, with 20%, transportation (17%) and media and broadcast (12%), among large industry segments. ViTrue noted the explosion of online deals through sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, Twitter and Scoutmob helped make retailers more active in social media last year. But none of the new group-buying sites themselves made list of top 100 social brands.

The biggest gainers in 2010 were AT&T and Visa, at No. 32 and No. 42, respectively. By expanding its social media staff from five to 19, ViTrue said AT&T was more aggressive in addressing customer service concerns on sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Visa's social presence got a boost from the company being a title sponsor of the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Another financial company, American Express, made the list (at No. 96) for the first time with social media efforts aimed at small businesses.

ViTrue says the ranking is the result of analyzing more than 2,000 brands online, looking at chatter across social networks, blogs, and photo- and video-sharing sites. Read more here.