INDIANAPOLIS -
Not every Super Bowl fan is super smart. They are looking to their smart phones for help and answers. This is billed as the most and first truly social Super Bowl.
There is a team of Super Hoosier Helpers. Consider them as elves dropping in on thousands of tweets, blogs and conversations looking for ways to help.
Downtown when Super Bowl Fans like Bill Davis are wondering,"Who's signing autographs today," they're ready with answers.
Laura Mitchell wanted to find out about the ice carving challenge. Jim Eckert wanted to know "where the streets are when the venders are open."
These Super Bowl Village visitors look to their smart phones for help. A room full of twentysomethings are the ones putting eyes and ears and answers on the internet.
In front of his computer screen, Jeremy Dullens said, "I'm telling people right now where they can find parking."
A few seats away Sarah Kowalski mentioned, "A lot of women are tweeting about Ryan Gosling right now. He's walking around." Jordan Overton typed, "Doing zipline right now, a lot of zipline questions."
Builders of the first ever Super Bowl Social Media Command Center claims its computer screens see the entire information highway. The same kind of software intelligence agencies use to hear what friends and enemies are saying about the US is hearing what people are saying about the Super Bowl.
Computers scour Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites for hundreds of Super Bowl related words, look at who is talking, what they are saying and where they are. Then volunteers join the conversation.
Taulbee Jackson is president of Radius, an Indianapolis.com company that spent two years putting the system together. " It is being there to help however we can," he said. "That is what Hoosier hospitality is all about."
It is perhaps a modern miracle for fans like George Rogers who freely admitted, smart phone in hand,, "A man like me needs a little big of wisdom to walk around." And who wouldn't dare stop and ask a real person for directions.
Follow the Social Media Command Center @superbowl2012 on Twitter.
