Internet | Social media rocks the World Cup

By Anna Malczyk

While South Africans and tourists are dancing to the tune of real-life vuvuzelas and international soccer stars take to the field, the social networking world has been buzzing with news, facts and up-to-the-second updates about the FIFA World Cup 2010. Here’s what’s been happening.

First social World Cup
The 2010 World Cup is the first one that has seen social networking used to its full potential. During the last World Cup in 2006, Facebook was till in its early stages and Twitter had yet to be invented. Social networking in general was still a niche trend. This has changed in the intervening years: hundreds of millions of people take part in these networks, and billions of messages are sent, every day. Naturally, much of the recent communication has revolved around the world’s biggest sporting event. The first ever World Cup-related trending topic on Twitter was “vuvuzela”, appearing on the 9th of June as South Africans united to blow their plastic trumpets at noon.

Instant updates
Like never before, this World Cup is characterised by instant updates, comments and discussions online. A controversial penalty is given and, moments later, soccer fans are debating it over Twitter and Facebook. A few minutes later, blog posts, articles and videos appear online. Anybody connected to the web can get scores and match updates instantly.

Big names
It’s not only the fans who are getting involved: important figures, soccer players and officials are joining in. You can read FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s views and answers to fan questions on Twitter (@SeppBlatter). Soccer players Wayne Rooney (@RealWayneRooney) and Kaka (@realkaka) are also tweeting, while others like Peter Crouch prefer Facebook.

Web tools and apps
There’s a whole host of web tools and applications for those who want to join in the World Cup action. Twitter users can sign up for one of FIFA’s many feeds – news, scores, play-by-play updates. Facebook users can add applications that update their schedules around matches, games that let them manage the soccer teams and can even take part in some fantasy betting. On top of that, there are even browser plug-ins that give instant match updates, like the official FIFA.com Chrome extension.

How are you following the World Cup action?

Anna Malczyk is the communications executive at GetSmarter.

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