March Madness is just beginning, but these four teams topped the positive online buzz rankings, according to Zeta Interactive. The agency analyzed about 200 million blogs, message boards and social media websites looking for keywords related to each of the 68 first-round teams. (For instance, “I have Duke winning my bracket” would count as a positive mention, while “I don’t think Duke will make it past the Sweet 16,” is a negative.)
Zeta’s rankings (see charts below), sometimes upend conventional wisdom. For instance, Ohio State, which is the No. 1 seed in the East Region, is rated fourth in Internet buzz, after Syracuse, Kentucky and North Carolina, thanks to an association of such “cluster words” as “difficult,” “long” and “overrated.”
Zeta also picks Gonzaga, Utah State and Richmond as favored “upset” teams this year.
This report is hardly the final word, though. Advertising Age, working with NetBase, came out with its own buzz rankings, which picks a different Final Four (and, unlike Zeta, projects a winner -- Duke). To its credit, Zeta last year projected the actual winner, Duke, accurately, but had Duke facing off with Michigan State, rather than Butler in the finals.
Using similar methodology, Zeta also projected The Social Network as the Academy Award winner for best picture (The King's Speech actually won) but correctly picked the best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress and best director winners.
