Last week, the world received news of Tiger Woods being hospitalized with serious injury from a car accident. The world felt sorry for Tiger, wished him well, and waited in anticipation for news of his recovery. This week, the world has a different perspective. As details began to spill, the world had learned that his car accident was the result of Tiger fleeing from his wife as she chased after him, bashing his car with a golf club from news of his unfaithful behavior. How did the public react? How has the sentiment changed? Let’s do some research.

First, let’s compare the topics of conversation around Tiger Woods before news broke of his alleged affairs.

Tiger Woods Topics (Before News Broke of Affairs):

Tiger Woods Topics (After News Broke of Affairs):

Tiger Woods Sentiment Before Accident:

Tiger Woods Sentiment After News Of Affairs:

We then go on to measure which topics were being discussed the most around Tiger Woods chatter. Below are some of the topics we analyzed. We included some of the hot topics, including the names of potential mistresses being mentioned.

We also wanted to take a quick peek at the Nike. Let’s see if there’s any real effect or association of this negativity with their brand.

Tiger Woods mentions within Nike chatter

Nike Sentiment within Tiger Woods conversations

Nike BEFORE:

Nike AFTER:

Nike’s negativity did increase this past week, but not significantly. We can certainly conclude that Nike’s brand wasn’t severely affected by this mess. However, Tiger Woods’ brand certainly has been. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how this continues to affect his brand in the coming weeks.

On Friday October 2, 2009, President Obama flew to Copenhagen, Denmark to urge the International Olympic Committee to pick his hometown of Chicago to be the host of the 2016 Olympic games. Accompanying the President included first lady, Michelle Obama, as well as talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

We used Social Radar to research the 2016 Olympic games chatter.

We decided to pull a chart of positive, negative, and conflicting chatter over October 1 to October 3, 2009.

Let’s also take a look at the context of the chatter from the October 1 to October 3, 2009.

The data clearly shows that the overall sentiment of Rio de Janerio being chosen to host the 2016 Games as positive (as you can see from the words highlighted in green).  However, the news that Chicago was cut first round was devastating to many as you can see by the volume of negative words used.

We also decided to look at the positive and negative conversation trend (green and red lines) correlating with conversation volume (the bars) from the month leading up to the announcement to the day following the announcement.

As you can see, there was a significant amount of positive chatter in the month leading up to the announcement. However, on October 2 we see the negative trend line increase while the positive trend line decrease. This change in trends could be due to the mixed emotions felt by many. Sadly, there will be no Olympic games for Chicago in the near future.

Even without a dramatic Tiger Woods comeback victory at Augusta National on Sunday, Masters Tournament web chatter nearly doubled in 2009. The trend chart below compares chatter around the 2008 and 2009 Masters Tournaments.

The @The_Masters Twitter account rapidly accumulated 41,442 followers throughout the tournament this weekend. The Masters Facebook page has 42,811 fans. The Masters iPhone app released April 1 is currently the #4 most downloaded free app on iTunes.

We’ll also be monitoring buzz on the NBA playoffs over the next month after TNT announced that Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith and other on-air talent will be Twittering during games beginning April 14.

North Carolina is the talk of the tournament. The Tar Heels are leading all other NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 teams in chatter. Should they thank President Obama for picking them to win the championship in his bracket?

Industry executives project online ad revenue for the NCAA tournament will reach $30 million dollars this year, up 30% from 2008 according to Business Week. Companies like AT&T and Coca Cola lead a list of 35 online advertisers for CBS this year. Anyone watching the NCAA tournament games this weekend has no doubt seen the Capital One commercial where the mom picks the picture of her kid covered in spaghetti to put on her credit card.

But does anybody care? The trend chart below shows that overall Internet chatter about both AT&T and Capital One is flat, if not down since the tournament started. If online sponsors aren’t getting any more chatter, what are they getting? Is the sponsorship investment paying off?