Statistically speaking, it would seem that Facebook had the best year of major companies in the social media space, considering it now has more than 350 million members, eats up 5 percent of our collective Internet time and may be approaching $1 billion in annual sales.
But when it comes to online conversation in 2009, LinkedIn took the top prize when it comes to positive buzz, or what I’m calling “social media approval ratings,” according to data published by Zeta Interactive, which scoured more than 100 million blogs, message boards, and social media postings to determine scores for 10 leading sites.
LinkedIn’s successful year, says Zeta CEO Al DiGuido, is “due in large part to the difficult economy forcing many professionals to network online for jobs.” It would also appear that the site’s architecture and design had something to do with it, as the three words most heavily associated with LinkedIn were efficiently, friendly and easy.
Elsewhere in the study, MySpace placed last with an approval rating of 69 percent, but that wasn’t far behind other leading social sites -- both Twitter and Facebook had ratings of 76 percent, with users associating the word “privacy” with the latter and “addicting” with the former. Users also seemed pleased with online dating sites (another sign of the economic times?) with Match.com and eHarmony receiving ratings of 87 percent and 83 percent, respectively.