Discussion

Which Social Media Records Did The #WorldCup Final Break?

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Given the amount of people who actively use social media, and the amount of people to whom football is more or less a religion, it should be of little surprise to hear that Sunday’s World Cup Final broke Facebook and Twitter records.

Germany’s extra time victory over Argentina managed to elicit 280m interactions on Facebook (posts, comments or likes) from fans and observers across the globe. That figure eclipsed the record for the most Facebook interactions for an event, which had been set at 245m by the 2013 Super Bowl.

A new record was also set for the most tweets-per-minute, which peaked on Sunday at 618,725 and comfortably broke the record set earlier in the week when the hosts Brazil were annihilated 7-1 by eventual world champions Germany (580,106 tweets-per-minute). However the Germany vs. Brazil game still retains the record for the most tweets in a game, (36.6m), with only 32.1m tweets being posted during the World Cup final.

They were two very different games, with the record-setting Germany vs. Brazil game descending into the viral sharing of memes before half an hour had even been played, while the Germany vs. Argentina final was a much more tense affair during which people may have been less inclined to aver their gaze from the match to a second screen.

Another interesting fact came from Facebook, with the social network revealing that the top five countries participating in the global interactions were the USA, Brazil, Argentina, Germany and Indonesia. It’s a little surprising that the two countries battling it out in the World Cup final were not the top two countries in terms of Facebook activity, although as stated, it’s reasonable to assume that both the Argentinians and the Germans would be glued to the match itself, rather than posting to social networks.

Were you active on social media during the football World Cup? What were your favourite moments from Brazil 2014? There many memorable tweets, posts and viral memes doing the rounds, and it must be said that social media really did provide a supplementary layer and subplot to what was already a fantastic global occasion.

If you have a particular favourite social media moment from Brazil 2014 then please link to it in the comments section below.