If adding newsfeeds and opening the site to everyone and their brother wasn't enough, Facebook has found another way to get people to spend more time on its Web site: cashing in on the excitement of the NCAA men's basketball tournament with its basketball pools.\nSome students were unaware of the pools last year, but they are beginning to catch on. \nJunior Justin Howell normally participates in several pools through newspapers like The Herald-Times or the Indianapolis Star, but this is his first year participating through Facebook.\n"I'm still a basketball bracket virgin in the Facebook world," Howell said.\nHowell started his own pool called "Ballin,'" as something fun to do. He said pools make the tournament more interesting because he has to pull for teams he normally wouldn't root for.\nBrackets will be released on the site at about 7 p.m. Pacific time Sunday, and they must be submitted by 9 a.m. Pacific time Thursday, according to facebook.com. Some students prefer participating in pools online to other methods.\n"It's a lot better than written pools," Howell said. "This way no one will be able to go in and change it."\nFacebook is awarding cash prizes to the top 10 finishers out of all pool participants. \nThere are two ways to be a winner in the Facebook basketball pools, according the Web site. One way is through the Global Bracket Challenge and the other is through the Round by Round Challenge. Points for each challenge are scored the same way. Participants receive one or more points each time they select the correct winner of a game. The number of points varies depending on the round of the tournament. Correct selections are worth one point in the first round, two points in the second round, four points in the third round, eight points in the fourth round, 15 points in the semifinals and 25 points in the championship game.\nIn the case of a tie, the Global Bracket Challenge has three tie-breakers and the Round by Round Challenge has two. If there is a tie in the Global Bracket Challenge, it will be broken by the reference to the projected combined score of the final game. If there is still a tie, it goes to the person who picked the most correct game-winners. If there is still a tie after the first two tie breakers, a final winner will be chosen at random by a drawing that will be held at RealTime Media's offices.\nIf there is a tie in the Round by Round Challenge, the winner will be decided according to who chose the most correct game-winners. After this, if there is still a tie, the winner will be chosen in a random drawing at RealTime Media.\nPrizes vary depending on the challenge, but the first-place winner in the Global Challenge will receive $25,000. \nBut not everyone participating in the pools is interested in winning a prize.\n"Most people do it for money, but I don't have money to bet with," said junior Jamie Worsek. "It's just basically a pride thing."\nWorsek said she doesn't normally participate in basketball pools, but she joined a Facebook pool last year and enjoyed it. \n"I did better than most of my guy friends," Worsek said.\nSenior Robert Gephardt said he has been participating in basketball pools since he was in middle school. He said he enjoys using Facebook's networking capabilities to join pools with people he knows.\n"When Facebook started it last year, everyone kind of switched over to there instead of using all the other Web sites," Gephardt said. \nSome think using other Web sites to participate in pools can require more work than using Facebook.\n"It's easier than going through hoops on Web sites like ESPN, where you have to sign up and fill out all this info," Gephardt said. "Everyone's already on Facebook, and you can just click a link and have everything already set up right there."\nGephardt said advertisements are something else he had an issue with when using Web sites like ESPN and Yahoo!.\n"If you tried to go to the brackets on those sites, they would direct you to a temporary Web site that has a big, huge ad and you'd have to click through that," Gephardt said.\nFacebook is laid out better with regards to its advertisements, Gephardt said. When he wants to check brackets in between classes, he said it's faster for him to use Facebook.\nAlong with cash prizes and a preferred format, Facebook has given students another reason to use its site to follow the tournament. Junior Todd Autio said Facebook has given students more creative freedom in their pools. \n"The best thing about Facebook is that people make up stupid names and put up funny pictures," Autio said.
\nfor their basketball pools," Autio said.\nAutio's reasons for joining a facebook basketball pool don't stop there.\n"I pretty much join anything on Facebook to look cool," Autio said. "And hopefully I can prove that I'm smarter than somebody else that was in the pool with me"
