I was looking at the debate on the problems surrounding the subprime lending crisis in our InfluenceMonitor service today.
The figure below shows the share-of-influence(1) of a number of well known investment banking brands has in the online “subprime”-debate.
Notice how the share-of-influence of Bear Stearns and UBS seems to be correlated: Initially UBS was the brand in focus. In June however, Bear Sterns announced problems with some of their hedge funds. For a while it took the heat of UBS.
However from July and onwards the focus on UBS has been steadily growing while the interest in Bear Stearns has dropped almost correspondingly.
Interestingly Citygroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, ABN AMRO, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank mostly escape attention.
The focus on Goldman Sachs however seems to be growing.
(1)
Share-of-influence is calculated by measuring the share of earned coverage a brand gets in a particular context and then factoring in the measured, topical influence of each voice that discusses the brand. So, when the topic is "subprime" a mention in NY Times will count for roughly 50% more than a mention in CNN.com’s money section.