NET RESULTS:Social media approval poll is a surprise, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON
GOOGLE, TWITTER, Apple, Facebook. In a popularity contest, who do you think would walk away with the crown and bouquet?
It turns out that the general public – at least in the US – adores Google. Apple comes a close second. But Facebook, surprisingly to me anyway, barely musters a “like”.
And poor Twitter can’t even settle for Miss Congeniality – with more respondents disliking Twitter than liking the 140-character “microblogging” service, Twitter seems to have a bit of a personality problem.
The results came back recently in an ABC/Washington Post poll, which asked whether people saw the companies in a favourable or unfavourable light.
Some 82 per cent of Americans in the poll sample said that they saw Google in a favourable light – and that rose to 92 per cent among those under 30. Apple, the maker of several iconic products (most households will likely have at least one), nipped into second place at 74 per cent.
But Facebook only received a 58 per cent favourable poll, with more than a quarter of respondents – 28 per cent – seeing it unfavourably. Still, Twitter will be envious. Despite its millions of users, the tweet service only gets a 34 per cent favourable rating and – ouch – 36 per cent unfavourable (the remainder are don’t knows).
In some ways, such a survey is trivial. Shareholders are hardly about to demand a reshuffle of board members or executives on the basis of a little popularity poll.
On the other hand, the results give a refreshing, and surprising, insight into the way in which ordinary consumers view these high-profile technology brand names.
From my tech-centric perspective, I’d have thought Facebook and Twitter would be considerably more popular – Facebook especially.
And I would have thought that Apple would be more popular than Google.
Given the long history of the Cult of Apple and the “Mac Faithful” – the fanatics who place Apple and its products before God and country – I would never have believed Apple would be 16 percentage points behind Google (37 per cent versus 53) in people who say they have a “strongly favourable” opinion of the company (as opposed to “somewhat”, the other choice for intensity of feeling).
But Apple will feel a lot better by looking at Twitter’s “strongly favourable” camp – a measly 8 per cent. By contrast, 14 per cent are “strongly unfavourable” about Twitter.
Such a lukewarm response to the company suggests it may be more difficult, for more nuanced reasons than previously expected, to find a really successful business model.
Will companies shy from a service that a majority of people actually don’t like? And that such a small proportion say they strongly like?
When broken down into response groups, some of the survey findings are hardly shocking. For example, older people, who have a much lower take-up of social media, give greater “unfavourable” ratings to Facebook and Twitter than young adults. Facebook has a strong “favourable” rating of 76 per cent with young adults, while older people are split fairly evenly between like and dislike – 34 per cent are favourable towards Facebook, 33 per cent unfavourable.
Twitter is also more popular with young adults, at 42 per cent, but its executives can take little comfort from that, when 43 per cent of young adults see it unfavourably. Only 18 per cent of seniors see Twitter favourably.
One amusing result: 70 per cent of liberals have a favourable opinion of Facebook, contrasted with 55 per cent of moderates and 54 per cent of conservatives. Analyse that.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google and Apple, while consistently popular across all age groups, are most popular among young, affluent, college-educated respondents. Over 90 per cent of people with household incomes over $100,000 like Google and Apple.
For Facebook, the survey statistics are hardly anything that the company can bask in as it readies for its initial public offering. True, the company has faced a number of public own goals and regulatory slaps with choices made in the past about privacy controls, management of user data, advertising programmes, and site redesigns.
But Apple and Google haven’t had it easy, either, in between regulatory investigations, various lawsuits, questions about ethical operations in China for both companies, privacy issues and concerns about market control and dominance. Yet only 9 per cent of people gave Google an unfavourable rating, and only 13 per cent Apple.
It would seem that, somehow, people are willing to cut Apple and Google more slack, or are less interested in these broader issues and the companies concerned, whereas perhaps Facebook hits closer to home, given its huge user base.
Maybe it’s simply a case that it’s easier to see how something on Facebook directly affects a given user, whereas concerns about Chinese citizens is too abstract to directly hit a reputation.
But – more likely, I think – it could simply be that well-recognised, already popular brands will do well because they already are well-liked. In the last annual rating of the world’s top 100 brands by Interbrand in 2011, Google was ranked 4th and Apple 8th, both in the enviable top 10.
Neither Facebook nor Twitter even appear in the list. They may be huge services, but in international brand terms, they barely figure – at least, not yet.
