Not surprisingly, Barry Blitt’s illustration of Barack Obama and his wife Michelle on the July 21 New Yorker cover generated lots of blog buzz. We ran a conversation query on obama + new yorker to learn more.

So far, there have been 917 unique posts on 213 sites. Common key words repeated in the conversation include "cover" (more than half of all posts use this word) and about 40% of the posts also reference “McCain.”

What was the overall reaction by the influential bloggers? Many saw it as satire, though some thought it lacked taste. Overall, the bloggers felt this was typical fare for the New Yorker.

That said, some influential conversation threads are clearly troubled by the cover's implications. With many Americans trying to sort fact from fiction on both Presidential candidates, quite a few influencers and their readers are upset with the timing and nature of such a cover. The comments stemming from one of the top posts in the conversation (coming from 2 Political Junkies, the 13th overall most influential site in the obama + new yorker conversation) have deemed the cover blatant American racism, while others say it’s a bigger reflection of harbored fears.

The most influential post was from a mainstream media blog, CBS’ Media Web, on July 16. It calls the negative backlash predictable and ridiculous, saying this is clearly a use of sarcasm to mock the “irrational prejudices that plenty of Americans harbor about the Obamas.” Columnist Jon Friedman expresses surprise that more media outlets never rallied around the New Yorker, and posits the heated criticism of the cover from conservatives reflect the group's extreme dislike of two of the most visible and successful symbols of liberal America - the New Yorker and Obama himself.

Book-focused blog The Millions weighed in with the 5th most influential post on the subject, stating that the illustration was not funny, just offensive and dumb.

Our take? Cover art is a way for magazines to sell. We all know the trials of print media these days, and from that position, Blitt’s illustration did exactly what it was supposed to do: spark conversation and, likely, sell more magazines.

Newsflash: Iconic American company Anheuser Busch was recently sold to Belgium-based InBev. What does the blogosphere have to say? We plugged in 3 conversation queries ("InBev"; “Anheuser Busch"; and of course "Budweiser") to gauge blogger reaction and learn who is leading the discussion.

It appears that instead of raving about their favorite summer beer, Budweiser fans are more concerned about the impact this takeover will have on their brewsky of choice. In the "Budweiser" conversation, more than a quarter of all posts analyzed contained reference to InBev.

Meaningful Distractions sets the tone for the nature of influencer reaction when it comes to this pending merger. The blog post, Patriotism Watch: Nation Mourns as Budweiser sold to European Brewer, is the most influential in the Budweiser conversation and the 6th most influential for the InBev/Anheuser Busch search.

Political blogs are even dragging the presidential candidates into the brouhaha. A post from the New York Times' The Caucus blog (4th influential for InBev/Anheuser Busch, #6 for Budweiser) looked at the McCain camp’s position on the takeover, with the headline Beer Money: The McCains and the InBev, Anheuser-Busch deal. The post reveals that Cindy McCain, who allegedly drives a car with a MS BUD vanity plate, stands to significantly benefit from the merger, given she has inherited Hensley & Co, an exclusive wholesaler of Anheuser Busch products in Phoenix and the third largest distributor in the nation. While the post reveals her personal holdings are 34%, the remaining shares are in the family.

Of course, Barack Obama was not left out of the influencer discussion; the Reuters blog, which rang in as the #2 most influential post in the AB/InBev disucssion, and #4 in the Budweiser one, quoted Obama as saying the sale is "a shame". The Democratic nominee's take? If Anheuser Busch really needs to sell, they should be able to find an American buyer.

Overall, it seems big media blogs are owning breaking news, while consumer generated blogs are reacting on a more personal level, pondering the future of their beloved brewer. Of course it remains to be seen how all of this will impact the Budweiser brand, or Anheuser Busch's bottom line.

Last week, we ran queries to analyze how a big news story can potentially trickle out to the blogosphere. We chose a headline that seemed to be everywhere: the infamous (and unsubstantiated) "pregnany pact" story of Gloucester, MA. Seventeen girls in a local high school became pregnant this year, and there are conflicting reports as to whether they had an agreement to get pregnant and raise children together.

We ran two queires to source conversations and the influencers driving them: Gloucester + teen pregnancy; and pregancy pact + high school.

The first string produced a much more robust result - at the time of the analysis, there were 136 influential blog posts in the conversation, and more than 88% of the posts included the word "pact."

Interestingly, most of the influential social content picked up on this subject was sourced from the blogs of traditional news sites - not parenting blogs.

#1: Associated Content: 17 Girls Pregnant from Gloucester High School
#2: Boston Herald: Teen Moms: Pregnancy Pact a Dumb Idea
#3: National Post (Canada): Teen pregnancy pact shocks Massachusetts city

The only influential parent blog making the influential top 10 was Parent Dish. Other UGC sites making the top 10 were A Child Chosen and Edstrong.

Why has this story fallen flat in the blogosphere? Perhaps news items reported to death in mainstream media lose their edge - or it could be the somewhat salacious (not to mention sketchy) idea of a teen pregnancy pact didn't warrant attention/content from influential consumer blogs.

I am so thrilled with our latest back-to-back episodes of Vino Diaries. Last week, our lady of Web2.0, Sarah Lacy, stopped by, and this week we welcomed a woman whose name I've long pined for, Jory Des Jardins, co-founder of BlogHer. This interview was incredibly fascinating, and I should add the bottle of Nadia (a refreshing white rhone blend) was a standout (props to District's amazing wine director Caterina Mirabelli).

Jory talks about the notion of blogs serving as today's digital "back fence" for women - a means to connect, communicate and lean on each other. This dynamic goes much deeper than affliations enabled by social networks, which, according to Jory, connect people by tag, interest or keyword. Blogs "connect people by concepts, by emotions, by stories," making the ties established on these platforms much more significant.

BlogHer's recent poll of women bloggers also reveals an interesting fact - 55% of women would give up alcohol for blogging (though a meager 20% would be willing to ditch chocolate). Blogging is indeed a new addiction, and the very same women who blog from the heart also control household spending - a fact causing many a brand advertiser to salivate.

Click here for the full interview - and don't forget to check out the BlogHer Conference in San
Francisco July 18-20!

Last week, we were lucky enough to welcome long-time Businessweek reporter and newly-minted book author Sarah Lacy (check out her blog and get her book Once You're Lucky. Twice You're Good, now).

I found this a pretty captivating conversation, as evidenced by my rather full glass toward the end of the episode (and my expression in the thumbnail). In this industry, it's easy to get swept up in Silicon Valley tunnel vision, and take for granted living and working where magic happens. Sarah's book is a great reminder of the mind-blowing genius that resides in this relatively small stretch of Northern California - and the incredible passion, guts and willpower required to dream big, and deliver even bigger. Bravo!

You can check out the interview in full here.

We’ve heard from bloggers for a long time about wanting better advertising solutions. So we set out to create something that would help them more effectively reach advertisers who are using our Conversation Targeting service. And today, I’m fired up that our Buzzlogic Conversation Ad Network has officially settled into beta. You can find out more here http://adnetwork.buzzlogic.com/bz/home/, but in summary here’s why our play is special:

* Our goal is to build a different kind of ad network, one that leverages a bloggers historical influence around certain topics to create a better advertising experience for their readers and better performance for our advertiser clients.
* As we seek feedback during the beta period, we are guaranteeing a $2 CPM for all accepted participants – there's a $200 max payout for that period. After that each campaign will likely differ according to advertiser demand and interest, with our goal being to do consistently better than a $2 CPM floor.

We love feedback, and invite you to help steer our development of a better mousetrap for advertising on blogs. Please drop me a line at todd at buzzlogic dot com whenever you like. And if you don’t get to us first, we’ll be reaching out to hear about your experiences and what you’d like to see from BuzzLogic in the future.

Kids out of school, temperatures reaching scorching levels...summer blockbuster season is upon us. With summer just now offically kicking off, we ran some queries between June 11 and June 25 to see what influential content was bubbling up to the surface when it comes to this season's crop of contenders. Some findings:

-Who knew? In the comic books + movies conversation, two Canadian blogs wield the most influence: TheSpec.com from the Hamilton Spectator and the National Post.

-The most influential post in this conversation is from TheSpec.com on June 18, profiling Big B Comics, a Canadian comic book store. The owners say pop culture has changed the face of the comic book industry. Comics are no longer for geeks.

-In the graphic novels + films conversation, the most influential blog is actually a gaming blog Kotaku -- not too surprising, given the frequency with which blockbuster films turn into video games.

-The most influential post here is from Film School Rejects about the upcoming release of Wanted; the post includes new images recently released by Universal.

For our latest analysis snapshot, we ran some conversation queries to surface what the influencers had to say about summer vacations.

Here were some themes that emerged:

--30% of conversation among influential blog focused on the hit consumers are taking from rising gas prices - and how that has impacted vacation plans (14,000 posts in the last 6 months!)

--What else is generating a lot of buzz? Statistics from Reuters and eMarketer. Emarketer says two-thirds of consumers have yet to make summer travel plans because of the downturn, and Reuters posits that consumer travel will be drastically reduced if gas prices hit $4.

The top blogs talking about these issues include: Autoblog, The Consumerist, Gadling and The City Room

Check out PR Week's Media Watch column for the full BuzzLogic analysis.

Val likes to play a word association game with guests on the Vino Diaries. It’s actually very interesting to think about the emotions words can evoke, and brand names are no exception. They can create strong emotional responses – Comcast, Walmart, CocaCola – what do those evoke in you? One interesting tool taps into our collective unconscious to surface key associations with these brand names, providing a pulse on the brand: Noah Brier and his BrandTags project.

The results, while not surprising, are very telling. For example, when we think of think Apple we think Innovative, Computer, Awesome. When Gap comes to mind, we think Clothing, Khaki, Preppy. But who would have thought that Duracell would be so strongly associated with its rival, Energizer's brand icon... a bunny?

A driving force in what creates these connotations are the interactions customers have with your products and your employees. You can run, but you can’t hide: the truth and the reality of the customer experiences you facilitate will always bubble up to the surface.

Play the game for a bit. Like the #1 association we collectively have for the word Blackberry……it’s Addictive.

Everyone in the marketing world is grappling with the same thorny question: Do standard measurement mechanisms apply? For brand advertisers, typical 1.0 Web metrics don’t paint the complete picture when it comes to conversational media. So, what exactly is the best method for measuring success? And in the realm of social media, is a single action taken by a Web user the beginning and end – or has the social nature of the Web made it possible for advertisers to understand so much more?

The good people at FM Media have decided to help marketers get one step closer to the answer with their Conversational Measurement Toolbox, launched today. The Toolbox is a suite of campaign measurement, planning and reporting tools designed to help marketers achieve greater control and better insight into their social media marketing efforts – and BuzzLogic has been tapped to offer its reports as a FM Media partner.

Social media is different than traditional media – it’s…social. But, we know traditional ad models aren’t going to vaporize overnight. Instead, advertisers need to build on traditional measurement models and adapt to the social nature of the Web. Understanding the conversational landscape around an ad campaign makes a huge difference. John Battelle says it best, “Great voices attract great audiences.” Getting a crystal clear picture of that attraction in motion can provide powerful insights for driving ad campaigns.

When we launched Conversation Ad Targeting last November, we knew one of the primary strengths of our algorithm, in addition to locating influencers, was its ability to surface socially-connected content - between high quality blog posts. This characteristic has been baked into reports we offer our advertisers – and now, FM Media customers can enjoy the same benefit.

We’re excited to be working with FM Media, and together solving the media puzzle within social media.