text: As Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders clashed in their first one-on-one debate it was the senator from Vermont who started to trend worldwide.
  So what are Bernie's supporters doing differently to bolster his support amongst younger voters? One place where he is a surprising hit is the dating app Tinder.
  Kevin Smit from Alkmaar in the Netherlands has used Tinder to spread the Bernie gospel. "I'm not a heterosexual male and I too believe he's sexy" he joked to BBC News.
  "He's a hit because there's a lot of millennials on the app and he polls amazingly with them".
  Fans of Bernie's Tinder triumphs share their success on Facebook and Tumblr.
  Logan Jantzi from New York told BBC News that it was Bernie's policies which lead to his Tinder appeal.
  "He discusses problems that are of actual concern to young voters"  he said.
  "Gender inequality, low wages, high student loan debt, climate change, these are the things that 18-30 somethings are concerned with."
  Nelson Evans, a Bernie Sanders supporter from California, told BBC News that the popularity of Bernie on social media was because his supporters didn't think their candidate received enough attention in traditional media.
  "There's people who even pay the full Tinder membership fees in order to reach others across the country" he said.
  "I think it's effective because, prior to the Iowa caucus, the media has completely shut Bernie out of the news cycle. For every 81 minutes of election coverage he'd get 10 seconds and Bernie supporters know that."
  "But people who get their election news from the mainstream media, they have no idea what Bernie is all about. That's sort of what started the Tinder thing.
  "It's amazing how you see people from 17-29 who have gone from never being interested in politics to being completely enveloped by it.
  "This election represents more than just a candidate. It's an indication that the youth know what direction they want our country to go, and they're ready to work vigorously for it," he added.
  The hashtag #demdebate has been used more than 600,000 times over the past 24 hours to discuss the debate between Clinton and Sanders:
  Both candidates have their names shortened on Twitter to fit with the platform's character limit.
  Hillary Clinton is commonly called '#HRC' by supporters, a term which has featured in more than 49,700 tweets over the past 24 hours while the term #Bernie far surpassed that and was used in 322,000 tweets.
  On Facebook, Bernie Sanders' personal page has almost three million likes while Hillary Clinton is only able to manage 2.3 million.
  But his popularity on social sites won't necessarily translate into Bernie Sanders becoming the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
  Left-leaning young voters in the UK frequently made the Labour leader Ed Miliband the top trend on Twitter and other social sites during last year's general election, as part of the hashtag #milifandom campaign.
  Unfortunately for him, his online fans did not turn into a majority in voting stations last May.
target: As the race to become the Democratic presidential candidate heats up in the United States, the left-leaning Bernie Sanders has become a surprising star on social media, with young voters using mobile phone apps to push others to #feelthebern.