What was the online hype around BlackBerry’s

latest launch?

On 30th January, the much anticipated BlackBerry Z10 was revealed to the world. During the

weeks prior to release, thousands of posts were published on the internet about the phone

and whether it would help BlackBerry’s prospects. Ebuzzing Social looked at the impact the

BlackBerry Z10 made on the web and collected data in order to give a general view of what

has been said on several sources: Twitter, media, blogs and forums. The study began on 15th

November and ran up until the official launch on 31st January.

Overall English publications mentioning the BlackBerry 10 range were worth an earned

media equivalent of £3 million, a significant addition to BlackBerry’s advertising campaign.

Total Publications

As shown by the graph above, there was a steady rise in buzz as more information was

gradually revealed, and the release date drew nearer. We see a peak on 16th January when

a training presentation for the BlackBerry 10 was leaked to the public and another on 21st

January when BlackBerry announced they were renaming BlackBerry App World, BlackBerry

World, to reflect the changes taking place in the store. The peak at the end of January saw

more than 12,000 publications across the internet talking about the BlackBerry 10. This peak

was three times the daily average amount of publications for the study period.

Publications by medium: pie chart, followed by full breakdown

As we can see, the event has been mostly mentioned on Twitter, with 98% of total

publications occurring on the site. Forums are second (1.8%) with blogs and media only

representing 0.2% of total publications.

Focus on Twitter

The following table shows the top 5 most influential Twitter accounts in the UK that

tweeted about BlackBerry 10. Their influence is based on the number of followers they have

on Twitter.

Top Twitter publishers in the UK, sorted by number of followers

A total of over 110,000 Twitter authors mentioned BlackBerry 10, and more than 230 million

followers were reached. Almost 30 million of those followers were from the top 5 Twitter

authors alone.

Top Tweet examples in the UK: Alicia Keys and Stephen Fry

Alicia Keys, who was announced as the new Creative Director for BlackBerry ahead of the

BlackBerry 10 launch, tweeted to almost 11 million followers and received more than 1,700

retweets.

Stephen Fry tweeted about BlackBerry 10 to more than 5 million followers and received

more than 350 retweets.

Soulja Boy tweeted about BlackBerry 10 on 4 separate occasions to more than 5 million

followers.

Twitter keywords cloud

The cloud above is built from the most frequent keywords in BlackBerry 10 tweets.

The most frequent descriptive word for BlackBerry 10 was: excited

The most frequently talked about feature was: apps/ applications

Apps and applications are probably mentioned the most often as they are considered to be

BlackBerry’s Achilles heel. Comparatively to iPhone and Android BlackBerry World has a

limited inventory. BlackBerry has tried to improve the situation by holding a weekend where

developers could upload their apps for free, but for many apps are a weakness for

BlackBerry.

Focus on Blogs

Blog publishers by Ebuzzing Social ranking

In a qualitative way, blogs help spread the buzz on the Internet as shown by the graph

above. Over 400 blogs wrote about BlackBerry 10 and 5% of these publications are ranked in

the top 300 of an Ebuzzing Social blog ranking, which make them key influencers within the

blogosphere.

BlackBerry 10 was talked about in more than 400 blog articles. The Technology category was

where the vast majority of blog publications came from, with 59% of the sectorial share.

Business was the next highest category to be represented with 14% of the sectorial share.

Top blog publication: Geeky-Gadgets

Geeky-Gadgets bring the latest news on technology and gadgets, and they have written

about BlackBerry 10 on 43 occasions during our study. They are one of the most influential

blogs in our Technology Ranking, currently 3rd as of January 2013.

Top blog publication: Tech Radar

Tech Radar provides full reviews of the latest technology, testing products to their limits and

identifying the key features. They have written about BlackBerry 10 the most, with 75

articles identified during our study. They are currently ranked 10th in our Technology

Ranking, as of January 2013.

Focus on Media

BlackBerry 10 was talked about in more than 250 Media articles, including articles from The

Guardian, Reuters and T3.

Top media publication: Pocket-Lint

Pocket Lint was the most talkative media publisher, with 50 articles about BlackBerry 10

published during our study.

Focus on Forums

BlackBerry 10 was discussed in more than 200 Forums, generating more than 5,000 posts.

The Forums that were identified included: Howard Forums and Red Flag Deals.

Top Forum publication: BlackBerry Support

The largest discussion took place on BlackBerry’s support forums, where there were 1,186

posts published during our study period. This was followed by Reddit, which had 972 posts.

Competitor Share of Voice (SOV)

The pie chart below shows that BlackBerry (RIM at time of study) command the smallest

share of just 2%. This is a considerable distance behind Nokia (14%), Samsung (37%) and

Apple (47%).

It should be noted that Apple and Samsung have generated discussions around products

outside of the mobile phone market, and this will therefore contribute in part to an

increased share of voice. However this is not the case with Nokia. The small share of voice

reflects BlackBerry’s performance over the last four years, a recent ComScore1 report shows

that BlackBerry’s market share fell from 17% in October 2011 to 7% in October 2012. It will

be interesting to see whether a rise in share of voice for BlackBerry mirrors a rise in sales.

RIM changed their name to BlackBerry during this study but this will not have affected the

results, firstly due to the announcement coming at the end of the study period and secondly

due to many articles post-announcement still mentioning both RIM and BlackBerry.

Conclusion

Whilst the share of voice study shows that BlackBerry still has a lot of ground to make up on

Nokia, Samsung and Apple, it is clear that BlackBerry 10 has generated an enormous

amount of buzz and excitement across social media. A recent article by Reuters states that

BlackBerry’s new phone ‘had already succeeded on one crucial count – getting RIM

(BlackBerry) back in the conversation’. During the last three months BlackBerry shares have

almost tripled and BlackBerry will be hoping that the increased buzz around the new launch

will help to wrestle market share back from the competition.

BlackBerry 10 fully touch screen version, the Z10

1 ComScore, The rise of big data on the internet, 25

th January 2013