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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Blogs, Twitter Both Buzz About Steve Jobs Book
The first authorized biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs -- due out in 2012 -- captivated bloggers and tweeters alike, becoming one of the rare stories to figure prominently in both social media platforms in the same week.
For the week of April 11-15, the Jobs book ranked No. 1 on blogs, with almost a third (31%) of the news links, and ranked second on Twitter at 7%, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
This is the first biography in which Jobs agreed to participate, something that appealed to internet commenters dissatisfied with several previous unauthorized biographies about the Apple CEO. The author of the book was also announced -- veteran journalist and author Walter Isaacson.
While technology stories are very popular on Twitter, they do not frequently dominate on blogs. This was the first time that anything related to Apple placed among the top stories on blogs in 2011. And it represents only the third time that a technology topic has appeared among the top five stories any week this year.
On Twitter, however, either Apple itself or an Apple product has been one of the top stories eight times in 14 weeks in 2011.
A technology story also registered as the No. 3 subject on blogs, at 15%. It featured a clip of Mike Lazaridis, CEO of Research In Motion (the company that makes BlackBerries), ending an interview abruptly when asked about the company's security problems. The discussion on blogs mainly focused on whether or not the interview was fair.
Two stories about the economy accounted for 23% of the links, one looking at what President Obama was expected to say in a his April 13 speech about the deficit and the other an op-ed about eliminating Roth IRAs.
The No. 4 story, with 8% of links, was about the CIA's new policy of de-emphasizing detention of terror suspects caught abroad (other than in Afghanistan and Iraq). The No. 5 story (4%) detailed an accidental U.S. attack on a convoy of civilians in Afghanistan.
The top story on Twitter last week, with 7% of the links, was a Mashable infographic called "The Winners & Losers of Social Networking" that provided details about the popularity of different social networks and demographic information about their users. Users tweeted the graphic in order to recommend it to their followers.
The Steve Jobs book took second place with 7% of tweets and right behind (also at 7%) was a TechCrunch article about PayPal cofounder Peter Theil's thoughts on higher education.