The New York Knicks white-hot trending topic point guard, aside from being the talk of the sports world — move over, you Super Bowl-winning Giants, it’s Lin Time — he’s also one of the most popular topics on Twitter, especially during his ascension from relative unknown to household name territory.
The story of Lin’s rise to his current position as the starting point guard on the New York Knicks, all while turning into a Tim Tebow-like pop culture trend, has been well documented by many different sources, so I won’t rehash. His Twitter popularity, while hinted at, has now been put into measurable data, and let’s just say Lin generates more chatter than President Obama. Aside from Lin’s personal Twitter account seeing an exponential increase in followers — although, probably not as much as his currently popularity suggests (Lin’s followers total is still under the one million mark) — the amount of Twitter chatter mentioning Lin has been massive.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, during the week of February 6th through the 14th, the time Lin’s popularity took off on its rocket-like climb, Lin generated more Twitter chatter than any other NBA player. Furthermore, during that same time period, Lin was mentioned more times that President Obama:
During the week of Feb. 6 through 14 (when the Knicks won six straight games), Lin generated the most Twitter volume of any NBA player, according to a study by social analytics company General Sentiment. Users mentioned Lin 2,610,684 times on social media and Twitter.
But not only is he the hottest topic within the NBA, but he’s also more talked about than the president. The study also stated that within that time period, users mentioned Lin more frequently than President Barack Obama on social media and Twitter.
But the Lin chatter didn’t stop there. During that same time period, the point guard’s Twitter handle, @JLin7, was mentioned 215,408 times.
TV ratings for the New York Knicks have improved as well. The team’s games are shown on the MSG Network station, and since Lin’s star began to shine, ratings for the Knicks have increased over 87 percent. With all of this in mind, one has to wonder how Hitler feels about the Knicks sensation:
“All he does is Lin, Lin, Lin no matter what… And every time Lin steps in the building, everybody hands go up…” Or something like that, anyway. DJ Khaled songs aside, are you an active Lin freak or does his trend strike the same as Tim Tebow’s? If you’re a sports fan, do you think Lin’s winning ways will continue when the Knicks face teams like the Heat, Bulls, and Clippers?
