Can the digital world determine the winner of Australia’s greatest race? Well, in a world first, TAB has launched the Melbourne Twitter Cup in a bid to find out whether or not it can!

The Melbourne Twitter Cup will monitor and gather conversations from the Twittersphere regarding the ‘race that stops the nation’.

Anytime a horse that is entered for the Cup is mentioned on Twitter, it is given a ‘vote’ of sorts and takes one step further in their bid to win the Melbourne Twitter Cup.

The more banter and tweets around a particular horse, the more chance they’ll have in writing their name into the history books.

After Saturday’s Cox Plate, Fiorente shot to the lead in the Twitter Cup as conversations, hashtags and @handles went into overdrive after the impressive placing.

You can check out the progress of the Melbourne Twitter Cup at:

www.twittercup.com.au

One horse that could win the online race is overseas raider Brown Panther.

He is part-owned by football legend Michael Owen, who has over 2million followers on Twitter. If his supporters were to throw their weight behind him, Brown Panther, who has had heavy support on TAB Fixed Odds to win the race, could blow his opposition away!

“We want to make sure that our customers have an enjoyable and fun time when placing a bet with us,” TAB’s General Manager Marketing Communications, Glenn Lee said.

“As a market leader we’re always looking for ways to improve our communication and engagement with customers.

“In a world where everything is increasingly becoming mobile, there’s a heavy emphasis on all things social and digital.”

The winner of the Melbourne Twitter Cup will be declared at jump time of the big race, but the count will continue until Wednesday to determine who was the most tweeted about runner after the race finished.