Wisconsin basketball head coach Bo Ryan joined Mike & Mike on ESPN radio this morning to discuss restricting the transfer options for freshman forward Jarrod Uthoff.

Bo Ryan became a trending topic on Twitter shortly thereafter, with a varying range of reactions. We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

Bo Ryan mentions

Bo Ryan mentions spiked 800% today.

Bo Ryan conversation sentiment

Conversations mentioning Bo Ryan online today have been 71% negative.

While some praised Ryan for his stance, others voiced opinions online via Twitter that Bo Ryan should have been monitoring the negative feedback he was receiving online during the interview and just stopped.

One thing is for sure, in today’s social media age, everyone is under a public microscope. Sports reporter Darren Rovell may have said it best: “Lesson for Bo Ryan & others in the media: You can choose to avoid Twitter, but Twitter won’t avoid you.”

Are you doing everything you can to monitor your brand online?

Tim Tebow, quarterback of the Denver Broncos, continues to confound critics and delight fans as he guides the Denver Broncos to win after win, moving them ever closer to a playoff spot. Despite having terrible stats (he ranks 30 out of 34 quarterbacks this season), Tebow’s Broncos have found ways to win games since he became the starting quarterback .

And if that’s not enough, “Tebow” is a verb now, too. To Tebow is “to get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone else around you is doing something completely different” according to Tebowing.com.

How does Tebow’s buzz compare to other leading NFL quarterbacks? We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

Quarterback buzz

Tim Tebow has thrust his name into the spotlight over the last six months, surpassing Mark Sanchez, Tony Romo, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady in mentions online.

Tim Tebow sentiment

After increasing negative buzz through mid-September, conversations around Tebow have been positive the last two months. Tebow has the Broncos leading the AFC West at 7-5 and currently ranked 10th in ESPN’s NFL Power Rankings.

Microsoft is reportedly spending $100 million+ marketing Bing, signing partnerships with ESPN and Jay-Z.

Bing vs. Yahoo vs. Google chatter

Google is currently generating more than 20x more chatter online than Bing. Google is also generating more than double the chatter of Yahoo, which just announced its second round of layoffs in two months.

Bing vs. Yahoo vs. Google sentiment

Although Bing is generating considerable less chatter, conversations around Bing are more positive (87%) than conversations around both Google (79%) and Yahoo (78%).

Google conversation topic cloud 1/18 – 1/25

Last week Google announced that co-founder Larry Page would be replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO. Page has been mentioned in 33% of Google-related posts within the past week. How will the CEO swap affect Google moving forward?

With the 2010 NFL season kicking off tonight, we wanted to see which teams were most popular heading into the season. Each week ESPN publishes its NFL Power Rankings, which ranks teams based on overall performance. We thought it would be interesting to create a popularity ranking based on how much the teams were being talked about online.

We measured overall buzz for each NFL team throughout the last month. The table below lists ESPN Power Ranking and our Social Radar Buzz Ranking side-by-side for comparison:

In the chart below, teams are listed in order of ESPN Power Ranking, and the bars represent overall chatter for each team.

We will check back throughout the season with updates on popularity based on chatter.

September 7, 2010 marked the 14th anniversary the night Tupac Shakur was shot after a Mike Tyson title fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Tupac was the most talked about rapper online yesterday, with Tupac surging past Drake, Lil Wayne and Jay Z chatter.

ESPN documentary series 30 for 30, featuring 30 stories that transformed the sports landscape in the last 30 years, chose to highlight the infamous night in an episode entitled “One Night in Vegas” airing on ESPN last night.

We ran analysis to see how much of the chatter around Tupac was related to ESPN. On Sept 6-7, ESPN was mentioned in nearly 17% of Tupac-related chatter.

The chart below shows overall chatter about Tupac during Sept. 6th and 7th, with the percentage of ESPN mentions within those posts each day.

Overall chatter about the 30 for 30 series is at its highest point of the year currently.

The Social Radar Top 50 measures the brands with the most active Web presence based on overall online conversation volume. To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during all of 2008 and 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

This year has certainly been interesting. Several new brands made their way to the mainstream making our 2009 Top 50 list, such as Kindle, Amazon’s hit e-book reader, and Android, Google’s mobile OS that is spreading onto smartphones like wildfire. Interestingly, Samsung and Nokia took a big hit this year, as sexier smartphones such as iPhones and Android-powered devices from HTC and Motorola gain more attention.

The list certainly shows that 2009 was the year of Social Media. Twitter moved ahead of Google to take the number 1 spot, while Facebook and MySpace made significant leaps over big brands as well. Most video game related brands were down this year as well, including Sony, Wii, Xbox, and Nintendo. It also appears TV brands all jumped this year including Disney, MTV, Fox, BBC, CNN, ESPN, and ABC.

Download the PDF:

View the full list below, or download the PDF. For additional information about how you can analyze chatter sentiment to gauge positivity/negativity, view key words mentioned about your brand and identify key influencers, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Social Radar Screenshot:

Questions or comments? Twitter me @adamcoomes.

The September 2009 Social Radar Top 50 measures the brands with the most active Web presence based on overall online conversation volume. To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during September 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during September 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

Twitter falls a bit, but still takes top spot. LG’s new BL20 Chocolate helped LG jump 11 spots. NFL rises again this month as the NFL season heats up. MTV jumps 13 spots due to buzz around the MTV Video Music awards. AT&T’s announcement of MMS support on the iPhone raised AT&T’s position up 5 spots.

View the full list below, or download the PDF. For additional information about how you can analyze chatter sentiment to gauge positivity/negativity, view key words mentioned about your brand and identify key influencers, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @adamcoomes.