Apple loses buzz, Microsoft gains
The net loss in “media value” last quarter, according to a new report, was nearly $460 million — Click to enlarge. Source: General Sentiment — Here's an interesting exercise. Take the total number of news stories, social media mentions and tweets about Apple …
Context & Ripple Effects
The buzz reversal lands on top of a two-year role-reversal arc: Silicon Alley Insider framed Apple as the new Microsoft back in August 2009, and by October 2010 Apple had rocketed past Microsoft in quarterly revenue by over $4 billion. Now General Sentiment's measurement flips the symbolic ledger — a confirmed net loss of nearly $460 million in Apple's media value last quarter against a Microsoft gain.
The timing matters because Microsoft is not passive in the quarter: it has quietly armed reseller partners with marketing resources for a 2011 campaign against the iPad after publicly dismissing the device, and Apple has begun building a social footprint of its own with an official App Store Twitter account following earlier iTunes accounts.
First-order effects
- Microsoft enters its 2011 anti-iPad campaign with rising media momentum behind it, softening the credibility gap between its public dismissal of the iPad and its private battle plans.
- Apple's new App Store Twitter account reads as a direct patch for the social-media deficit General Sentiment quantified — the company is meeting the conversation channel where it was losing ground.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft faces a messaging contradiction its own partners will have to manage: publicly dismissing the iPad in sales conversations while resellers are equipped to fight it, a tension the buzz gain amplifies rather than resolves.
- Media-measurement firms like General Sentiment gain pricing power over corporate communications budgets as their 'media value' figures get quoted by outlets like Fortune alongside earnings.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, sentiment metrics become a standing boardroom KPI read next to revenue — and the divergence here (Apple winning revenue, losing buzz) shows the two indicators can point opposite ways, forcing companies to manage both.
- The Fortune piece frames Apple's situation through the Gates-to-Ballmer handoff eleven years earlier, signaling that leadership-transition narratives are becoming the market's default lens for valuing founder-centric companies.
The trend: Media-sentiment analytics are hardening into a financial-market signal that investors weigh alongside earnings, even when the two measures contradict each other.