Researchers monitor Super Bowl buzz online - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

The online buzz from Super Bowl weekend says Indianapolis was a roaring success.

On sites like Twitter and Facebook, big game goers dropped messages everywhere.

"We were looking at key words, like 'SB46' and 'Super Bowl Village'," said Purdue University's Dr. Eric Dietz.

A Purdue team is learning what people thought of Indy's Super Bowl week.

"I'm just searching for Indy, to see what folks are talking about," said Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu.

The researchers are analyzing tweets, Facebook messages and other social media posts.

"Lasting image of Indy. Now time to go home," read one New England sports reporter's tweet.

"There we go, a pretty picture," said Dr. Vorvoreanu.

Using software to sift tens of thousands of public posts last week, Dietz found "overwhelmingly, the posts were positive. Most were neutral. The lion's share were neutral."

He credits good planning by city, state and the Super Bowl Host Committee. But there were some hiccups.

"We did see a lot of people complain about the traffic. The construction traffic in particular," says Dietz. "When people were stubbing their toes, that's something the city responded to quickly."

People posted about tripping hazards in the village. The city heard them and made fixes.

Professor Vorvoreanu was in the village Friday and noticed growing crowds. She alerted her team to watch for tweets about that.

"We could actually see the word 'crowded' and 'crowd' really emerge and become bigger and bigger," she says.

So the city closed streets, giving walkers more space.

"These kinds of concerts downtown, people were amazingly happy and excited about them, so we could see more opportunities for tourism in the city," Vorvoreanu said. "Zip lines were huge. Some of those people will want to come back, so how do we give them something to look forward to do for fun?"

Maybe more zip lines, Vorvoreanu said.