For those of you who haven’t heard, the tech giant was in some pretty hot water this week as a result of a scathing article in the New York Times that highlighted Apple’s involvement in deplorable worker conditions overseas. It’s lengthy, but worth a read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?pagewanted=1
I’ve seen quite a few Facebook posts regarding this article over the past couple of days so decided to dive into Sysomos to gather some insight into the Social Media impact. Surprisingly, mentions of the article/incident accounted for only 2% of Apple’s overall chatter. Pretty tiny. The only shift that could be seen was neutral/negative sentiment shifting from 45% to 66% vs. previous weeks.
What does this tell us? Well, when you’re a company as big as Apple, even major stories like this can be eclipsed by general product chatter and fanboy reviews. Goes to show (depending on the brand involved), not everything has the impact or share-ability we assume it will in social media
