Men in blue dominates social media sphere: Nielsen

The Indian cricket team is miles ahead of its competitors ahead of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 in terms of buzz. As expected, the Men in Blue are the most discussed cricketing team amongst social media users. Surprisingly however, Bangladesh find themselves ahead of the historically accomplished nations like Sri Lanka and South Africa.

According to analysis undertaken by NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company that helps organizations harness the power of social media intelligence, Twitter leads other forms of social media for consumer generated media, or "buzz' related to the World Cup.

"With Twitter leading other social media for discussions related to the World Cup, social media's linkage to current events, especially sporting events has been cemented and will play an increasingly important role in harnessing continued public attention on them. The habit of looking for a television set to check the score may become a very rare thing for consumers who are on the move and digitally enabled, " said Farshad Family, MD ' Media, India, The Nielsen Company.

Amongst players and brand endorsers Sachin Tendulkar is quite naturally the most discussed player but Paksitani skipper Shahid Afridi finds himself higher up the batting order compared to Ricky Ponting and Dhoni. Surprisingly, Yusuf Pathan appears in the top-five list globally and in India, finds himself ahead of Dhoni, Ponting and Afridi.

Conversations about the World Cup are being driven mainly by predictions about which teams are most likely to win, as do discussion on squad selection, and which players are likely to be the ones to watch out for.

For Team India, squad selection leads the list of topics discussed and while most deem the squad to be balanced, many find Rohit Sharma's exclusion surprising.

"It will be interesting to see how viewers relate to cricketers as celebrities and whether their performance has a desirable impact on the brands they endorse. It's clear from the pre-event buzz that social media will be the first place where consumers will unabashedly decide who the next big superstars will be and who brands can pick as suitable ambassadors for the future." said Family.