iPhone 5's Most Popular Features: Social Media Speaks

iPhone 5's 10 Best Features

Remember back in school, when your whole class would be called up one-by-one for something or other? Each person would get applauded, but even an outsider would know who was popular and who wasn't by the level of applause. If the announcement of the iPhone 5 was a high school assembly, then the new mobile device's bigger screen was the cool kid while its A6 chip was the bookish nerd.

Taykey is a startup that measures audience interest across social platforms and aligns brands with that sentiment in real time. During the announcement of the iPhone 5 on Sept. 12, Taykey monitored online sources including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and a variety of blogs to measure audience reaction to the new features of the device as each was announced. Taykey also measured the volume of response.

Overall, the sentiment was positive, but to varying degrees.

The iPhone 5's bigger screen and new design got the most positive response. People were less enthusiastic (although not negative) about the device's A6 chip and its improved camera.

Taykey also measured response to the iPhone's in-cell touch panels, LTE support, and better battery life, all of which were greeted with better-than-neutral response.

[ First-day iPhone 5 sales are strong. See iPhone 5 Preorders Set Brisk Pace. ]

Surprisingly, perhaps, sentiment around the new Lightning adapter--which will replace Apple's stalwart and de facto standard 30-pin adapter--was relatively positive. At least, it wasn't negative. This could be attributed to the fact that it was also announced that the new adapter is reversible (and people may have been counting the minutes that would no longer be lost when invariably plugging the 30-pin adapter in the wrong way) or to the fact that rumors about the new adapter have been swirling for weeks. Indeed, aside from the name, Lightning was no big surprise and users had likely already girded for it and resigned themselves to the purchase of a 30-pin adapter.

In terms of volume of conversation, the biggest peak occurred when the release date of the iPhone 5 was announced: Sept. 21. It will be interesting to measure sentiment when people actually get the iPhone 5 in their hands.

What is your sentiment about the new iPhone 5? How can companies benefit from being able to measure that sentiment in real time? We welcome your comments below.

Follow Deb Donston-Miller on Twitter at @debdonston.

Social media make the customer more powerful than ever. Here's how to listen and react. Also in the new, all-digital The Customer Really Comes First issue of The BrainYard: The right tools can help smooth over the rough edges in your social business architecture. (Free registration required.)