Super Bowl buzz on Facebook

Watercooler brings fans together ahead of the big game this Sunday

Long ago, pre-Internet, the office pool for the Super Bowl was probably one of the few times a year that die-hard football fans could get fellow colleagues to show some game-time spirit. These days, there's no reason to keep your rabid excitement to yourself. 

Through app maker Watercooler, you can join a growing fan base on most social networks. On the Pittsburgh Steelers Fan page on Facebook, the Steelers have a fan base of 276,000 vs 21,000 fans for the Arizona Cardinals.

On Sunday, the Steelers will take to field against the Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII. The game airs 6:25pm EST on NBC. It will be the Steelers seventh championship appearance vs the Cardinal's first Super Bowl in history.

The odds are in favor of the Steelers, whose fan base - if tickets sales are any measure - will dominate the stadium, much like they dominate Facebook. According to StubHub, 22 percent of tickets purchased on its Web site have been from Pennsylvania, while 8 percent were bought from Arizona (home of the Cardinals). 

There's no shortage of trivia and games on the social network to keep the passion and momentum accelerating, right up until game day. Thanks to Watercooler, fans can brush up on trivia questions, like "What coach led the 2005 Steelers to win the Super Bowl?" Or, you can join a virtual wave, like this one:

You can compete against other fans with your favorite photos showing your support and passion. 

Here's one I thought was cute.

The fan application by Watercooler, a maker of social applications to create fan bases around sports teams and shows, is one of 800 applications.

In this video clip of my interview with Kevin Chou, CEO and founder of Watercooler, Chou gives me a tour of the fan application on Facebook.

According to Chou, Watercooler's 800 applications generate 8 million monthly visitors and 300 million pageviews. He says that advertisers pay on average about $15 CPM and some of the fan pages around certain tournaments and big games can sell for $250,000.

Watch this snippet with Chou. We'll post the entire interview in the coming weeks.