Twitter Buzz Overwhelmingly Positive for Google's New Phone

To gauge the popularity of the Nexus One smart phone Google announced on Tuesday, Attensity has applied its sentiment analysis technology to the Twitterverse. The software company ran 15,000 Tweets that mentioned the device through its Voice of the Customer analysis software, which detects and aggregates positive and negative verbiage to draw conclusions about what a group of people feel about a subject.

While very few Twitterers characterized Google's effort as an iPhone killer, more than half said they like it and around 80% said they intend to buy a Nexus One (and more than 100 of those potential purchasers had more than 1,000 followers on Twitter). Among the features they like, more than 30% tweeted enthusiastically about Google's new Android 2.1 open-source mobile operating system; around 25% said they like the new phone's screen. Among those that made negative mentions of the Nexus One, just under 25% cited its applications (or lack thereof, since it is so new that few developers have written programs for it yet), its keyboard (which like the iPhone is a virtual, touch screen keyboard that suggests words as you type) or the Android OS (which to Apple afficionados may be unappealing).

The Nexus One has a touch screen, weighs less than five ounces and has a five megapixel camera. It will sell for $529.99 unlocked, or $179.99 with a two-year T-Mobile contract.