We've been charting the performance of the top 50 brands on social media (and looks at why some brands have done better than others), and there are some interesting results.

So, the votes are in, the results have been verified, and we can now reveal that, according to our Social Media Reputation Index, the most social brand in the world is.... eBay.

That's right: not Apple, or Google (though they are, predictably perhaps, numbers two and three on the list), but the brand that changed the way we shopped online, and paved the way for all things social. In social media terms, eBay punches above its brand weight (it ranks at 43 on the Interbrand index of top brands).

Blackberry comes in at number four on the list (it's at a relatively low 54 on the Interbrand index), which goes to show how far the brand has moved away from its 'Blackberry Dad' image.

Amazon is at number five, reflecting the value of the way Amazon has built word of mouth and social tools into its core service.

When we put the Index together, we calculated the social media reputation of the top 100 brands in the world by measuring the social media 'noise' (ie how many people are talking about it) with its popularity (whether what those people are saying is positive or negative).

We then added a 'recency' score, which provides a topical adjustment, so a brand that is being talked about now has a higher recency score than one talked about last six months ago.

The most important thing was the human analysis of the brand scores, to make sure we took into account sentiment such as sarcasm or slang, and the relative influence of different channels. We then gave each brand an overall cocial media reputation (SMR) score out of 100.

There were some real surprises. The brands that people are talking about online are not always the top value brands.

Harley-Davidson, for example, has some of the most loyal fans online, ranking it at number 30 in the top 50 social brands. On the other hand, there are some brands that you might expect to be doing better. Smirnoff does some fantastic social media work but it is really inconsistent, which means it ranks lower than it could in the top 50 list.

And then there's Apple. It comes in at number two on the social brand list, does absolutely no official social media work, and yet has the highest satisfaction score of any brand on the top 50 list. Which just goes to show that the first rule of social media is to have a great product.

Social media snakes and ladders small