#Linsanity - by the numbers - CNN

Sarah Palin’s on board, Obama’s on board, the whole world is on board --- it’s called Linsanity.  Since graduating from Harvard with a 4.2 GPA, Jeremy Lin had been cut by both the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets before heading to the NY Knicks– earlier this month he got a start because Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony were out with injuries. 

Since his debut at point guard on February 4, the Knicks have been on a winning streak.  Fans and media can’t get enough – and the term Linsanity has gone viral on the interwebz. 

It’s amazing how someone can own the web out of nowhere.

Let’s take a look at the numbers as discussed on CNN this weekend.

Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP

LIN SOCIAL MEDIA STATS
    •    215,408 Twitter mentions in one week - More than any NBA player (beating LeBron by 20,000)
    •    Added 668,589  Facebook fans since 2/4
    •    Since 2/4, adding an average of 48K Facebook fans/day
    •    Yahoo! Searches for "Linsanity" are up over 19,000%, with 27% of searches coming from people ages 25-34
    •    Yahoo! Searches for "Jeremy Lin" since January 1, 2012 have been almost 30 times higher than searches on "Jeremy Lin" for all of 2011.

And it seems like everyone is trying to cash in on the Linsanity craze.  Two guys are attempting to trademark the phrase (Linsanity) through the US Patent and Trademark Office. The story gained so much attention that Lin actually turned around and filed for the trademark himself!

CASHING- IN ON LIN
    •    MSG Ratings up 87% in Lin’s last 5 starts
    •    Rookie cards are up collecting $5k+ bids
    •    Lin jerseys have been the top-selling jerseys at NBAStore.com for the last couple of weeks, and they've now been shipped to 23 countries.  (Knicks' merchandise is up 200 percent compared to last year)
    •    China's CCTV has had a 39% viewership rise