CAMELOT FANTASIES

http://2015.ausopen.com/en_AU/news/articles/2015-02-01/rafa_the_social_king_.html?promo=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Australian-Open+%28Australian+Open%29



He has nearly three million Twitter followers more than the next closest tennis player on the planet and a handy 14 Grand Slam singles titles to his name certainly helps his popularity, so it is little wonder Rafael Nadal has topped the Australian Open’s Social Leaderboard for 2015.

The leaderboard tracks Twitter to determine the most popular players at the Open during the fortnight, and with a day of the tournament left to play, the Spaniard led the count for the tournament with 1,126,524 tweets, 76 per cent of them positive.

Two of the world No.3’s matches, in particular, drew a huge response – his scratchy five-set survival against American Tim Smyczek in the second round peaking at more than 10,000 positive tweets immediately after the win, and his quarterfinal loss to Tomas Berdych generating more than 8000 positive tweets.

Novak Djokovic came in a distant second with 562,470 tweets (keeping in mind this was before the men’s final had been played), with 90 per cent of them positive.

His five-set semifinal win over Stan Wawrinka drew the highest number of positive tweets for a match this tournament with nearly 19,000.

Maria Sharapova was the best of the girls, coming in at No.3 with 476, 493 tweets, 84 per cent of them positive. Her final showdown with Serena Williams drew nearly 8000 positive tweets, while her second round comeback from match point down extracted nearly 6000 positive tweets.

Despite losing in just the third round, Roger Federer still came in at No.4, with 343,511 tweets. His upset loss to Andreas Seppi had just 5000 positive tweets, while Seppi, who came in at No.10 overall, had nearly 9000 positive tweets after pulling off the win.

Serena Williams was the best of the rest, coming in at No.5 with 317,258 tweets, more than 16,000 of them positive.

Andy Murray came in at No.6, outgoing defending champion Wawrinka at No.7, Australian sensation Nick Kyrgios at No.8 and Nadal-slayer Berdych at No.9.

IBM developer Tony Johnson said the system only counted positive sentiment, with tweets linked via hashtags, twitter handles and the player’s name.

“It is a fun way to engage fans, they get to participate in the tournament by pushing their favourite to the top. It also give a real indication of the level of global buzz, or conversation about a player on Twitter,” he said.

“Negative, neutral and indeterminate sentiment is counted in the overall number of tweets for a particular player, but there's no classification for them.”

Nadal boasts 7.4 million followers on Twitter, ahead of Williams, with 4.56 million. Djokovic has 3.83 million, Murray 2.89 million, Federer 2.61 million, and Sharapova with 1.47 million.