New Social Media Report Challenges Traditional Billboard Music Charts

Second Installment of Measuring the Social Report Compares Billboard Charts to Top Songs Based on Social Interactions Online


MADISON, WI--(Marketwire - November 19, 2008) - Networked Insights, a provider of customer intelligence across social media, today released the second Measuring the Social report detailing the top 10 songs among the online audience as compared to Billboard's weekly Hot 100 chart. While traditional music charts like Billboard determine song rankings based on sales and airplay, Networked Insights' report offers a new take on music audience measurement by analyzing the millions of interactions occurring online everyday around the most popular songs.

Similar to Networked Insights' first Measuring the Social report that focused on television ratings, the music report shows significant differences between the Networked Insights and Billboard rankings. Once again, the research indicates that the online population represents a unique audience and should be measured and marketed to differently than traditional methods.

Key findings of the second Measuring the Social report include:

--  Seven of the songs on Networked Insights' top 10 list do not appear in
    Billboard's top 10 songs, indicating a large discrepancy between song
    purchase/airplay and audience interactions online
    
--  While both lists consist mostly of pop and hip-hop/R&B songs,
    Networked Insights' chart shows a different genre with two songs in the
    "alternative" category: Secondhand Serenade -- "Fall For You" (5) and
    Coldplay -- "Viva La Vida" (7)
    
--  Secondhand Serenade's lyrics are popular among social network users as
    they lend themselves well to posting as comments and on friends' pages as
    evidenced by "Fall For You" taking the fifth spot on the Networked Insights
    chart
    
--  During this timeframe, R&B group Brutha released an a capella version
    of Kanye West's song "Love Lockdown" online, generating interest from the
    online audience, and boosting the rank of the original song on the
    Networked Insights chart to number 9. "Love Lockdown" does not appear on
    the Billboard top 10
    
--  American Idol winner David Archuleta's "Crush" is third on Networked
    Insights' list due to the strong interactive component of the show
    transferring to online interactions
    

"The second Measuring the Social report proves that across many industries, marketers need to fully understand their online audiences and not just rely on traditional forms of measurement that leave out this massive, influential group of people," said Dan Neely, founder and CEO of Networked Insights. "The way people interact with music now goes far beyond just buying it or listening to it on the radio, and the music industry needs to update the traditional ways they analyze and understand their target audience."

Today, online measurement generally involves listening to the 15% of people that post content online. While this section of the audience is important, the other 85%, which Networked Insights uncovers, is interacting in other ways equally as valuable when analyzing audience behavior online -- reading, rating, sharing, linking and inviting.

In the early days of the Web, when sites were one-way and static, audience measurement was based on eyeballs, then shifted to transactions as the Web became more complex, which painted a more accurate picture of online behavior. Now, understanding true online behavior is about understanding the social, measuring all the different ways people are interacting online. This also includes the important metric of influence for each interaction -- for example, Tiger Woods sharing a golf video carries far more weight than an everyday golf enthusiast taking the same action.

To gather data for this Measuring the Social report, Networked Insights tapped more than 17,000 social media and social networking sites, which included 3.5 million conversations per day and over 120 million unique users. The Networked Insights top 10 chart is compared to Billboard's Hot 100 list for the week of October 28 to November 4, 2008.

For continued insights and access to the full Measuring the Social report, subscribe to the Measuring the Social feed at www.socialsights.com.

About Networked Insights

Networked Insights measures the social to drive more effective marketing, by determining who to target and how to convert them. We tell you where they are, the influence they carry and the language they use. Networked Insights gives companies the ability to discover and act upon real-time Customer Intelligence from a wide variety of social media sources, providing truly customer-driven insight based on both content and social behavior generated from customer-to-customer interactions. Previously, companies gained customer information by asking predetermined questions or proving company-generated hypotheses. Networked Insights puts the customer at the center of the intelligence process so that companies can let the customer decide what's important. Networked Insights is privately held and based in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, go to www.networkedinsights.com.

Contact Information: Contact: LaunchSquad Jeremy Frank or Gavin Skillman insights@launchsquad.com 212-564-3665