Apple iPhone, more news than actual interest?
Update June 18th: It looks like the iPhone search volume has completely spiked, surpassing original spikes, but I still think there’s a lot of saturation in the blog sphere. I will do a follow up after the phone is released.
Today I have been playing around with Google Trends and the BlogPulse tools. While trending some of the newest smartphones out there I noticed something odd with the iPhone data. It seems that last week when the new iPhone was announced there was actually a far larger spike in iPhone news than actual interest.
A. Cisco sues Apple over iPhone B. First iPhone Launch C. Apple lowers price D. Apple software update E. Apple announces business tweaks in future iPhone
In the chart above I have plotted the iPhone, Blackberry and HTC brands of smartphones. The top half of the chart represents the search volume, and the bottom part represents the news reference volume. As you can see the search volume for iPhone is all over the map when it was first launched in 2007. You can also see the news spikes are in tandem with the search spikes. In late 2007 search volume stabilizes.
Huge news spike, small search spike
When the new iPhone was announced in June 2008 there was a small spike in search volume, much smaller than previous announcements, but a massive spike in news volume that is larger than any of the previous news spikes. Now I’m also assuming that search volume equates to the overall interest in the iPhone. It’s also important to note that this data is still very new and may look different a month from now. It will be interesting to see this chart after the actual launch of the iPhone on the 11th of July.
Is the blog sphere becoming redundant?
If the data is correct however I think it shows how much information overload there is on some topics. The blog sphere is growing rapidly, almost to the point where there is way more information than demand for it.
This chart is a two month period generated on BlogPulse. It represents the number of posts on the iPhone within that period. The iPhone was announced on June 9th and you can see the blog spheres response. The big hot topics are the easiest ones to cover, so everyone jumps on the bandwagon. My Google Alerts for iPhone news have been overflowing my inbox for the past week.
Are we missing opportunity?
Now for contrast, look at the Blackberry or HTC smart phones. Their search volume is way less erratic and shows a steady upward trend yet the news on these devices, especially HTC show very little increase. I think it’s time for us bloggers to get a little more creative and dig a little deeper. Sure we all love reporting on the big cool stuff out there, but we may be missing opportunities to report on other great stories in the process.
