Side Project: Taking a look at Unofficial Social Media

I'm working up a story idea on the success of fan-based or unofficial social media sites over their official counterparts. For example, while Apple Computers has almost no official presence on Twitter (at least from what I can tell), @MacRumors has almost a quarter million followers. Another example, would be a fan-based/watchdog Facebook site called Protect the National Weather Service has almost as many "Likes" as the official U.S. National Weather Service Facebook site.

The rise and success of unofficial social media is an interesting phenomenon to me and I'm very interested in additional references, research and examples I know some of you can proivide.  Feel free to leave your comments here or you can reach me via Google+ or through CMS Report's Twitter account.