Barbie vs. Hello Kitty Social Media Showdown!

The Measurement Standard's Celeb-O-Meter

 

vs.

The tally of the dolls.

Longtime readers of The Measurement Standard will recall the Celeb-O-Meter, our intriguing-yet-tongue-in-cheek application of public relations measurement techniques to the burning questions of celebrity personality and popularity. (Here's is a sample from way back, when we were still The Gauge newsletter.) Now the Celeb-O-Meter returns, this time powered by social media.

A few days ago, the NY Times waxed all enthusiastic about the alleged Barbie vs. Hello Kitty hissy fit among fashionistas ("Hello Kitty and Barbie, Round 1"). It seems it's Barbie's 50th birthday, and the catty competition is trying to grab the spotlight. For more details -- especially detailed stats on the two contestants -- check out Jezebel's "Who Will Win The Hello Kitty Vs. Barbie Sartorial Smackdown?"

So we thought we'd use our infamous Celeb-O-Meter to set up the two diminutive divas of dollhood in a social media showdown. sitevolume.com provides the perfect stats to decide the bout, thanks to their Digg/MySpace/Facebook/Twitter Magic Mirror: Who's the most famous doll brand of them all? Or, at least, who's got the most social media mentions right now?

(Social Media Measurement Tip: Astute readers will realize that sitevolume.com can be used to make a rough assessment of the presence of most any person or company or product in the social media space. Just type in the name of your company (or your products or CEO) along with the names of some competitors, and see what the charts tell you. You might want to show those charts to your boss and impress the hell out of her. On the other hand, they might convince you that you really need to get back to work.)

For our Barbie vs. Hello Kitty event, we threw in couple other prominent names in the doll/toy universe, just to provide a baseline and make it interesting: American Girl Doll, GI Joe and Gumby. We also tried "Barbie Doll," but found very few mentions.

And the decision goes to...

As you can see from the charts below, Barbie's reign as the doyenne of dollhood is still secure. The Celeb-O-Meter is quite comfortable in concluding that, social media-wise, Barbie has got it all over Hello Kitty. Especially on MySpace, but also on YouTube and Flickr. Hello Kitty did make a strong showing on Twitter, but still didn't match Barbie.

The Big Surprise? GI Joe has got some seriously overpowering presence on Digg and Twitter, way more than our putative stars. Where did that come from? A quick google makes it clear that the new GI Joe movie, and associated video game, were probably the reason for all the mentions. (Special note to whoever is doing PR for GI Joe: Nice work on Twitter, but it's time to launch a beachhead on MySpace and Flickr.)

And for those of you who just gotta see the data, here are the charts (Remember, they are from our friends at sitevolume.com. Go try it out, it's fun.) (And if you can't see the charts here, you can see them in the regular newsletter version of this article here.) :

For Digg:

For MySpace:

For YouTube:

For Flickr:

For Twitter: