Commentary
Speaking Of Viral, Nielsen Metrics Show It To Be Waning
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, June 9, 2009
No, not viral videos, but an actual virus that has been heating up the blogosphere the past couple of months. Yeah, you guessed it, the swine flu virus. According to the most recent data from Nielsen’s monthly index of the most blogged news stories for May 2009, the seasonal conversation surrounding “Memorial Day†was No. 1 for the month, followed by (you’ve got to hand it to those trekkies) “Star Trek,†and “Barack Obama.â€
The flu virus ranked only eighth for the month, just behind “Cinco de Mayo†and “mobile phones,†but ahead of Supreme Court Justice appointee, and Bronx native, Sonia Sotomayor, and “Terminator Salvation†(which was actually a better movie than the new “Star Trek†flick (my opinion).
“While Swine Flu was top of mind for many bloggers in April, it fell to No. 8 in May,†the Nielsen report said. “Bloggers continued to discuss the latest cases and growing number of infected; however, there were also many conversations that discussed how the initial panic surrounding the epidemic was over-inflated and unnecessary.â€Table 1: Top 10 Blogged Topics, May 2009 +-------+---------------------------+ | Rank  | Phrase           | +-------+---------------------------+ | 1   | Memorial Day        | | 2   | Star Trek         | | 3   | Barack Obama        | | 4   | Dick Cheney        | | 5   | Notre Dame         | | 6   | Cinco de Mayo       | | 7   | Mobile Phones       | | 8   | Flu Virus         | | 9   | Sonia Sotomayor      | | 10   | Terminator Salvation    | +-------+---------------------------+ Source: Nielsen BuzzMetrics Custom Analysis
Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
