World Cup Takes Social Media by Storm, India Fifth on Twitter

by FC Admin July 16, 2014

Germany-Brazil semifinal saw a record 35.6 million tweets, much higher than the final’s 32.1 million

Twitter and Facebook have scored new records during the FIFA World Cup, as soccer fans and others got into the social media to discuss everything from Robin van Persie’s magic goal to Neymar’s injury and Lionel Messi’s miss in the final.
As many as 672 million tweets related to the tournament were sent out in the past one month. And on Facebook, during the June 12–July 13 World Cup, more than 350 million people had conversations around the topic, generating three billion interactions, including posts, comments and likes.

Sunday’s final generated 32.1 million tweets. But there were more tweets — 35.6 million – during the Cup-defining Germany-Brazil semi-final game, making it the most-discussed event in sporting history, said the microblogging site.

Aneesh Madani, head of sports at Twitter India, told ET: “India is a

top 10 global market for Twitter and this was reflected in activity around the World Cup as well.“

From Mario Balotelli’s cheeky tweet to Lukas Podolski’s selfie after the final, the live, public conversation allowed football fans to get up close and personal with all 32 teams and more than 300 players who were engaging on the Twitter platform.

“India was responsible for nearly 3.2% of the entire buzz on Twitter and came in at the fifth position when it came to discussing the final,“ said Bangalore-based Bhupendra Khanal, chief executive of social media aggregation company Simplify360. Argentina’s Messi was the most discussed player, while Germany was India’s choice for the final.

Of Facebook’s 1.3 billion users, 88 million people created 280 million interactions for the match between Germany and Argentina, making the World Cup final the single most-talked-about sporting event in Facebook history , said the social networking company . In the 2010 South Africa World Cup, Facebook had about 500 million users.

“Of the 672 million total tweets, we saw the bulk of the conversation during the live matches,” said the Twitter blog. Indian Twitterati

Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Karan Johar, too, engaged in conversation about the matches. Bachchan tweeted about the matches over 65 times during the World Cup.

source: Economic times