Steve Jobs passes Bill Gates in Fame-O-Meter
It’s hard to tell what is more surprising about Radar’s latest Fame-O-Meter results: that Steve Jobs has only now passed Bill Gates in the magazine’s “buzz index,” or that Radar thinks Rupert Murdoch is a “Web 2.0 figure.”
The Fame-O-Meter, according to the magazine’s website, is an “absurdly scientific real-time” measure of the “notoriety and cultural relevance” of public figures based on the number of times they appear in news publications, newswires, blogs and other sources combined with data from such aggregators as Google, Technorati and Yahoo.
“With last week’s announcement of the new iPhone, more gadget geeks than ever have been clicking for Steve Jobs,” writes Hailey Eber, who runs the meter. “Adding to Jobs’ online intrigue is concern over his health.” (link)
Apple’s (AAPL) CEO is still running behind Gates in the magazine’s monthly and weekly buzz indices, but he passed Microsoft’s (MSFT) outgoing chairman in the daily reports over the weekend and by Monday was pulling away, with 83 million hits to Gates’ 70 million. Jobs is comfortably ahead of News Corp.’s (NWS) Murdoch and Google’s (GOOG) Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Radar, originally founded in 2003 and relaunched twice since then, was nominated in May for general excellence by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
