The 2010 World Cup was the first major football event to really take advantage of the social networking phenomenon; how does it compare to the 2006 World Cup and what does it means for 2014?
We have learned many things from the 2010 World Cup; that countries cannot win with bad players, that being in an ‘easy’ group does not determine your success, and that communication between fans is driven by social media.
Since the tournament began, #worldcup has been the top trending topic on Twitter, just logging on to Facebook and seeing dozens of World Cup comments shows the enormity of the event. There are even specific social networking sites such as Oleole.com that allow fans to interact and discuss games. Mobile applications and viral videos have been developed and although businesses may complain when they see worker productivity fade, many a boss is probably cheering alongside as they watch the game on ITV or i-Player.
Since the last World Cup in 2006, the world has become more socially conscious, everyone has an opinion and a blog and if these individuals cannot find a specific site for their needs they will produce one.
Trying to compare social networking trends from the 2006 World Cup to 2010, is difficult. Twitter was only at Beta stages in 2006, and even Facebook was restricted to students. However, MySpace was having its heyday in 2006, and sports brands were taking full advantage, by incorporating large ad campaigns into the social networking forum.
Nike was one of the first to move away from just being an advertiser on MySpace World Cup pages, beginning its own social networking forum called Joga.com, fans could create a profile, link up with other fans and watch videos. As the start of the 2006 World Cup approached other brands saw the success of Joga and experimented themselves. Adidas and Coca-Cola had blogs, virals, and offered exclusive content through their sites. In fact, blogging took hold throughout the tournament, but it was not as interactive as it is now and a lot of time was needed to moderate and upload a blog.
These brands pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved at the time but the technology, developed by software and application developers since has given everyone the opportunity to explore and take advantage of the recent explosion in social media.
These days nearly every media and blog site talks about the Football; all the major broadcasters have real time World Cup coverage and up to the minute information about goals, teams and credentials. There are apps for every type of phone; the free Vuvuzela 2010 app has been downloaded more than 750000 times.
When Twitter first spread its wings in March 2006, it was just seen as a fad but four years on it can boast 1,500 percent growth. Who knew that it would transform into the most used real-time forum for the World Cup. It even has official and unofficial 2010 World Cup pages, each with over 115,000 followers!
According to Twitter's official blog, football’s biggest tournament has seen Twitter break its tweets per second record four times. The average twitter traffic is 750 tweets per second. Based on records, Twitter traffic increased every time a World Cup goal was scored, with the highest number of tweets (2, 940) recorded after Japan scored against Cameroon.
Twitter is now one of the most publically recognised forms of real-time interaction, however the nature of the comments should be taken into consideration, Pear Analytics carried out research in 2009 and found that 41% of all tweets are pointless babble, 38% are conversational and only 9% have pass-along value.
But, is this the case for the World Cup, is anyone commenting anything more note-worthy than the shouts you hear in the pub?
With only 140 characters to use, people are expressing themselves this World Cup, either through nonsensical comments such as @andrewlong81 “Why do I keep hearing people running naked if their team wins the World Cup, I would of if England did lol” or sharing interesting facts like @WCUP2010 “Javier Aguirre resigns as Mexico coach, three days after his team were beaten 3-1 by Argentina.” Which was re-tweeted over 100 times.
It isn’t just the public who are sharing their thoughts; even the players are connecting through Twitter. Sports Illustrated magazine recently ran Twitter profiles of the US national team, allowing the team to connect with their fans.
Of course, not all die-hard sports fans join the likes of Twitter, but just by logging into a Facebook account on any match day it won’t be a surprise to see at least a third of friends discussing it. Whether venting anger or pride, it isn’t enough to text your buddy or shout inside your own house, you need to share it with the world, and now you can.
Sites such as Facebook have been credited with the creation of new football heroes following World Cup matches, with hundreds of unofficial fan pages. Famebook has a page dedicated to the most popular World Cup Facebook sites, with England having the most popular page and nearly 440,000 fans, closely followed by ANFP (Chile) with 423,000. From this research it is clear that teams are more popular than fanpages dedicated to the game as a whole.
Whatever site fans are using there is definitely a link between surge in traffic and goals scored in the game. This trend clearly shows the rise in real-time usage of the internet, with many users typing or tweeting as second-nature.
Social networking has proved to be a powerful and revolutionary way to communicate, and the sites are adapting, with geo-tagging and advertising throughout. These services are still in their infancy and are too unreliable to use in the 2010 World Cup.
Twitter itself needs to become more dependable, only four years old it is increasingly inconsistent, crashing when there are too many tweets and upgrading at inopportune moments. Facebook too needs to be updated to give people the option to filter out topics and trends.
When the 2014 World Cup comes social networking will no doubt be at a whole other level; with 3Dgames on your phone, apps to find out which stadium your friends are, and even the football itself tweeting. One thing is for sure, Football brings people together.
Alex Iszatt
Feature Writer, Creative Jar
www.creative-jar.com/blogs
Twitter: creativejar