Superhype

Who are the top 50 social brands?

Recently Infegy published its March 2009 list of of the hottest social brands on the market — the names that have the strongest reach across the digital world as measured by a number of factors.  Some observations:

• The Top 5 are not surprising: Twitter, Google, Obama, the iPhone, and Facebook.  But four years ago, did you ever think you’d see the day when a U.S. president would battle Twitter, Google, the iPhone, and Facebook for top billing?

• I counted three games inside the Top 20 list: XBox (ranked 14), Playstation (#15), and Wii (#17). Anyone surprised that Wii ranked behind XBox and Playstation?

• It’s not surprising that Wikipedia made the list.  What’s surprising is that Wikipedia ranks only #44.  This is a brand that was created to be inherently social.

• Look for Kindle (#42) to steadily climb the list — I wonder if Kindle will even gives Amazon (#16) a run for its money?

• General Motors (#26) ranks ahead of MySpace (#29).

I did a double take when I saw GM rank ahead of MySpace and wondered if this list represented only the “most discussed,” not necessarily “top,” social brands.  But then my Razorfish colleague Megan Anderson told me about a lunch meeting she’d had at SxSW with Christopher Barger, GM social media director.  His team has been on Twitter since January 2008 and runs GMBlogs.com.  Moreover, all GM brands have YouTube channels.

As Megan wrote to me in an email, “The thing that made the biggest impression on me was that their team is very dedicated to clarifying any questions or confusion regarding the situation [GM is] in right now.  When the [Federal] bailout was announced for the automotive industry, they were up all night answering tweets (@gmblogs).”   Megan also directed me to this SxSW panel discussion in which Christopher was a participant.

What do you think of the Top 50 list?

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