World Cup Will Set Social Media Records

May 13th, 2010 | by: Daryl |

ftyt Do you remember social media at World Cup 2006? We had YouTube, sure, but the videos were a bit blocky. Twitter didn’t properly launch until July 2006 and Facebook wasn’t opened to the general public until that September. So basically social media just missed World Cup 2006.

Now it rules the world. Every website has a little f and a little t, and most feature content from the big YT. Every big event drives traffic and usage further. And apparently no event is bigger than World Cup 2010.

This didn’t occur to me until CNN pointed it out. But it’s actually kind of obvious. World Cup 2010 will be the biggest thing to ever hit Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and will set records for social media activity.

“Football is the world’s biggest sport, so the world will practically stop for the month of the World Cup,” Matt Stone, head of new media for world soccer’s governing body FIFA, told CNN.

“There will be so much more media consumed, used and published in 2010 than in 2006. Social media can bring fans closer together and give fans more opportunity to communicate with each other,” he added.

But that’s the FIFA guy talking. So we can’t necessarily trust him. What does the Twitter guy have to say?

“Our notion is that [the World Cup] will eclipse everything we have seen so far [on Twitter] including the U.S. election, the Oscars or the Super Bowl, simply because it is so international,” Robin Sloan, a Twitter employee that works on media partnerships, told CNN.

Which is a timely reminder of just how big a deal this World Cup thingy is. Obviously it’s a big deal to us football fans. It’s the biggest event in the sport we obsess about every day, and it only comes around once every four years. Which – for me at least – makes it easy to forget the very important fact that the World Cup is a big event even for non-football fans.

Obligatory reminder: You can find World Cup Blog on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. You can also follow all 32 World Cup team blogs on Twitter and find us on Facebook.

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http://www.bflofutsal.com/ryanknapp/ Ryan Knapp

It's going to be absolute bonkers. The days of Justin Bieber trending are gone for those f ew months.

The one thing I'll hate is if I can't watch a game live and I have to tape it I might as well run around with my eyes closed and ear plugs in because it will be downright impossible not to hear the score during the day.
soccerroo

yes but with all the options you can watch or follow the game from you office computer.
http://www.facebook.com/eunrose Ian Rose

Yeah, it's always hard to avoid a World Cup result – this year, and you'd assume from this point on, it's going to be nearly impossible unless you unplug completely.