Silicon Beach: Super Bowl Monday-Morning Quarterbacking in Social Media

​Ah, the Super Bowl -- that one time of the year when even football widows pay homage to pigskin. Silicon Beach caught the Saints-beat-the-crap-out-of-the-Colts game at Brickell Irish Pub, where a dozen screens afforded great views of men's scrotums covered in tight pants. The Celtic chips were also delicious.

But it wasn't all about the game or the finger food. It was all about social media, with the NFL (@NFL) featuring Twitter in big, bold letters and graphics on its homepage and creating buzz via the hashtag #SB44. As of Monday morning, #SB44 was trending along with the other reason we love the Super Bowl: TV commercials. #Bowl Ads 2010 and #Superbowl commercials were also buzzing on Twitter.

The MVP award in social media should go to Pepsi because the beverage giant chose not to spend $2.8 million on a 30-second spot. Instead, the company created the Pepsi Refresh Project, which will donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to individuals, small and large companies, and organizations with great ideas -- all based on crowdsourcing from its website and Facebook. People will probably be talking about Pepsi's "Refresh Everything" long after other ads are forgotten; never mind that Doritos bring football fans back from the dead, Google wants you to find the love of your life using its search engine, and Tim Tebow doesn't want you to have an abortion.

Mullen and Radian 6, advertising and web measurement firms, respectively, got into the ad game by creating the Brandbowl, a website to monitor the Twittersphere for ad popularity. According to the website, Doritos, Google, and Focus on the Family were the top scorers. McDonald's, Dr. Pepper, and Universal were the most popular. Budweiser bombed. The results were obtained from a whopping 98,656 tweets.

Did you miss the game or were too drunk to remember? No worries. Riptide live-blogged from "Sunny Deeeelight" Stadium with hilarious commentary by New Times staff writer Tim Elfrink. Worth a read if you forgot WHO DAT Saint's fan was you woke up with this morning.