CBSSports.com Goes Social with Facebook for March Madness

College basketball is ramping up for next month’s NCAA March Madness tournament, and CBSSports.com is getting ready for the action too with a deal with social networking site Facebook.

CBS Sports and its CBSSports.com Web site hasn’t been shy about experimenting with online and interactive components when it comes to promoting sports events like the March Madness tournaments. Next month it will run much of its coverage online for the sixth year in a row, but this year it will also host an NCAA March Madness Brackets application on Facebook. The application will allow Facebook members to make predictions on winners for each round and share them with friends, and will also link to tournament coverage from CBS Sports, CSTV, CBSSports.com and NCAA.com, according to the company. CBS will also offer a mobile component that will include a “Smack Talk Wall” and team rankings.

Considering how rabid some fans can be about March Madness, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of Facebook friends linking to this new application and then being brought over to CBSSports.com’s coverage for some additional online advertising page views.