The Social Brands 100 shortlist has been announced.

After much analysis, the successful brands go forward to the final round of judging to decide upon their individual ranking.

Of the 100 brands shortlisted, Manchester City is the only football club present. The club has a page dedicated to social media on its website and its Twitter feed, in which the players are heavily involved, plays a significant role in audience engagment. Alongside this, they are the only top level UK team to optimise their stadium for social media by installing screens displaying tweets from the #BlueView hashtag.

Another successful finalist, Blackberry, beat its largest rival, Apple, to the list. While Apple’s digital communication efforts were named “fragmented and content poor” in the 2012 Financial Times Bowen Craggs Index, Blackberry’s social media presence, which spans multiple global social communities, triumphs.

Charlotte Cumming, marketing manager at Brandwatch says: “We’re pleased to continue our partnership with Headstream this year and very excited by the response to the Social Brands 100.

“The analysis we provided involved a bespoke algorithm that we developed to ensure each nominated brand was assessed on the value their engagement delivered to the user and community, rather than community size or volume of content.”

The full shortlist can be found here: http://headstreamsocial.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/the-social-brands-100-shortlist-is-here/.