Contentious privacy policy changes haven't tarred Google's favorability
Given all the hubbub surrounding Google’s recent changes to its privacy policies, you might have thought that the company would take a significant hit in the court of public opinion.
Well, that clearly hasn’t been the case so far, as a new ABC News/Washington Post poll demonstrates. Conducted late last month among 1,007 adults, the poll asks respondents whether they have favorable or unfavorable opinions of certain major tech companies. The results are as follows:
–Google: Favorable: 82%
Unfavorable: 9%
Don’t know: 10%
–Apple: Favorable: 74%
Unfavorable: 13%
Don’t know: 14%
–Facebook: Favorable: 58%
Unfavorable: 28%
Don’t know: 14%
–Twitter: Favorable: 34%
Unfavorable: 36%
Don’t know: 31%
What’s sort of surprising here is the apparent antipathy toward Twitter, as it’s the only big-time tech company to actually register a net-negative favorable rating of -2. In their writeup of the poll results, ABC/WaPo don’t go into too much detail about why Twitter is rated so poorly, although they do unearth some interesting demographic nuggets. For example, Twitter is rated most positively among young adults, who give it a 42% favorable rating. However, 43% of young adults still rate Twitter negatively, which means its favorability is underwater even among the people who are supposed to be the early adopters of cutting-edge tech. Seniors are also not inclined to be Twitter fans, for what it’s worth, as just 18% view the brand positively versus 30% who view it negatively.
Now, I don’t like Twitter as much as I like Google, Apple or Facebook, but I can’t say I really view the company in a negative light. Can anyone out there shed some light on those? How can a social networking service that has over 140 million active users be so widely disliked? Do any of you guys out there have Twitter hate? If so, why? Let me know — I’m genuinely curious.
