• January 30, 2009

When it comes to generating social media buzz, Apple Inc. ranks as the brand with the most cachet.

Among the top 100 "social" brands ranked by social advertising company Vitrue, Apple had three brands in the top 10, led by iPhone at No. 1. "Apple" came in at No. 3 and iPod at No. 7.

Others in the top 10 included CNN, Disney, Xbox, Starbucks, MTV, Sony and Dell. Though indirectly ridiculed in Apple's Mac v. PC commercials, Microsoft rated a very respectable 11th in the first "Vitrue 100" rankings, based on the company's Social Media Index covering 2,000 brands.

The measurement tool tracks how much a brand is mentioned across social media platforms and assigns scores derived from a series of algorithms reflecting frequency of usage, the size of a social media property, among other factors. The index doesn't factor in any sentiment analysis, so the buzz it measures isn't necessarily always positive. The full list is here: http://vitrue.com/blog/ --Mark Walsh