World Cup to play out on social media

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NEW YORK (AP) — This year’s World Cup will play out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and messaging apps
like WhatsApp just as it progresses in stadiums from Sao Paulo to Rio De Janeiro.
Nearly 40 percent of Facebook’s 1.28 billion users are fans of soccer, better known as football outside
of the U.S. and Australia. On Tuesday, the world’s biggest online social network is adding new features
to help fans follow the World Cup — the world’s most widely viewed sporting event — which takes place in
Brazil from June 12 to July 13.
Facebook users will be able to keep track of their favorite teams and players throughout the tournament
in a special World Cup section, called “Trending World Cup.” Available on the Web as well as mobile
devices, the hub will include the latest scores, game highlights as well as a feed with
tournament-related posts from friends, players and teams. In addition, an interactive map will show
where the fans of top players are located around the world. The company is also launching a page called
FacebookRef, where fans can see commentary about the matches from “The Ref,” Facebook’s official
tournament commentator.
Social media activity during big sporting events such as the Olympics and the Super Bowl has soared in
recent years and should continue as user numbers grow. In 2010, when the last World Cup took place in
Johannesburg, South Africa, Facebook had just 500 million users. Now there are just that many soccer
fans (people who have “liked” a team or a player) on the site, the company says.
Facebook has recently focused on making its mobile app usable on simple phones that use slower data
speeds since many of its newest users are in developing countries. As a result, Rebecca Van Dyck, head
of consumer marketing at Facebook, said the World Cup hub will also be available on so-called “feature
phones.” Here the section will be “little less graphical” than what’s shown on smartphones and on the
Web, she said, but will include the same information.
Users can get to the World Cup hub by clicking on “World Cup” in the list of trending topics on the site.

In a nod to Twitter, Facebook, earlier this year, began displaying trending topics to show users the most
popular topics at any given moment. The feature is currently available in the U.S., U.K., India, Canada
and Australia.
“This is our first foray into this, especially for a big sporting event like this,” Van Dyck said. “We’re
going to see how this goes. If people enjoy the experience it’s something we’d like to push on.”
Facebook, which counts 81 percent of its users outside the U.S. and Canada, is unveiling its World Cup
features at a time when the company is working to become a place for more real-time, public
conversations about big events— a la Twitter. Such events attract big advertising dollars, though the
company is not saying how much money it expects to make from World Cup-related ads.
Not to be outdone, Twitter touted in a blog post last week that the “the only real-time (hash)WorldCup
global viewing party will be on Twitter, where you can track all 64 matches, experience every goal and
love every second, both on and off the pitch.”
Fans can follow individual teams or players and use the hashtag (hash)WorldCup to tweet about the
matches, and follow official accounts such as (at)FIFAWorldCup, (at)ussoccer for the United States team
and (at)CBF—Futebol for Brazil’s soccer governing body, for example.
The World Cup is the planet’s most widely viewed sporting event. According to FIFA, which organizes the
tournament, an estimated 909.6 million viewers watched at least one minute of the final 2010 game when
Spain beat the Netherlands. In comparison, nearly 900 million people watched at least part of the
opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics. On Twitter, more than 24.9 million tweets were sent out
during this year’s Super Bowl, up from 13.7 million just two years earlier.
Because it takes place over several weeks, marketers are gearing up for “a marathon, not a sprint,” said
Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst for research firm eMarketer.
“Developing countries will be a key target for global brands,” she said. “They will work hard to capture
the attention of soccer fans in Latin America, Asia, Africa. The challenges (include the fact) that all
the games are taking place in one place and the customers and marketers are in multiple time zones. This
will require around the clock marketing.”
For fans traveling to Brazil for the game and hoping to tweet and post about it on Facebook, the
country’s mobile communications services might pose their own challenge. Dropped voice calls are common
even without the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans descending on the country. Accessing the Internet
can be incredibly slow, and there’s even some worry about network blackouts.
“World Cup visitors won’t be able to communicate the way they want to,” Christopher Gaffney, a visiting
professor at Rio de Janeiro’s Federal Fluminense University whose research focuses on Brazil’s
preparations for the World Cup and Olympics. “Instagram, Twitter, social media will not function at
world class levels but at Brazilian levels, so people visiting Brazil will experience the frustrations
we face every day.”

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