These are all common questions during March Madness that can be answered literally at the tip of your finger. With the NCAA Tournament getting underway this weekend, social media conversations have sky rocketed. No longer do you have to tune into the television in hopes of catching details about your favorite team or players. People across the nation turn to their phone to search Google, Twitter, Facebook and many other sites to stay updated on what's happening in the college basketball world. Social media is all about current updates and can provide viewers with scores, stats, and predictions. According to the NCAA, 7.7 million social media comments were made about the tournament already. 88% of people use their cell phones to access March Madness information. .
This past week I traveled from Iowa to Florida. Throughout my trip, college basketball was a conversation I commonly overheard. I saw multiple people checking their phones and updating brackets. I even checked Twitter using a "Tweets in the Area" feature and saw that hundreds of people were constantly tweeting about the current games. Laying out on the beach, I was able to check Twitter to see what people were saying about games and who won through accounts like @SportsCenter and @NCAA.
One of the coolest things about social media during March madness is connecting with the players. Going to a university that is currently in the dance, I've gotten to see first hand the interactions taking place. Fans wishing players luck and congratulating them on wins. Athletes tweeting back thanking their supporters and posting other words of determination and assurance to their fans that they're ready to play. All of which people wouldn't be able to see before social media.
Google Trends is an online feature to see what people are searching about. On the first day of March Madness, "NCAA Brackets" and "March Madness" we're #2 and #3 in the list of most searched on Google for the day with over 1 million searches each.
Finally, Facebook generated a completed bracket solely based on social media mentions of teams and released it days before the tournament:
Very interesting facts mentioned above! I am also one of the millions of people that use my cell phone to check highlights and scores!
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