Let’s take a look back at some of the bigger stories of the World Cup from social media, as well as the prominence of the event in Europe.

One widely reported research result from the knockout stages of the World Cup was how Twitter users reacted to the penalty shootouts. Twitter’s own research department put out a graph of the Greece v Costa Rica match, which was widely picked up in the press.

In particular, Twitter noted that sometimes “silence tells the story”:

Parallels can be drawn here to other events. Particularly, we looked in the past at how different forms of television spark Twitter conversation, with reality television frequently seeing peaks in discussion during the show.

This contrasts with dramas such as Sherlock, which often see their peaks at the end, with a similar “anticipation” window during the show itself.

The US (and Australia) loves football

As we discussed previously, the World Cup has set viewing and streaming records in the United States.

It seems the presence of Americans in the Twitter conversation hasn’t been significantly hit by their team’s elimination. Germany v Brazil had the highest viewing figures of any World Cup semi-final in American television history, and was the highest ranked non-US game ever on ESPN/ESPN2.

A look at tweets on generic World Cup hashtags from July 10-14 show the US led the way in number of tweets. Brazil ranked second, with locals still interested through their team’s third-place playoff (and, of course, any tourists who had changed their timezone). London ranked third with finalists Argentina in fourth place:

In Australia, SBS also reported new streaming records for its World Cup coverage across mobile and online, with users showing a large preference for “live” coverage versus on-demand. SBS’ World Cup multi-stream service (below) won many plaudits, with the only negative being that sound issues persisted throughout the final.

Comic relief

As ever, beyond the discussion of the matches themselves, social media remains a hotbed for sarcasm and humour. FIFA president Sepp Blatter was a source of controversy throughout the tournament, and – sitting next to Vladamir Putin – remained a source of amusement (and marketing) in the final, as shown in this tweet by Betfair Australia:

Also prominent during the penalty shootout that decided the Netherlands v Argentina semi-final was a mistake from British commentator Peter Drury, who was featured on the television feed that went to range of countries including Australia.

Drury has never been one of the most popular commentators, and his mistake – being ready to proclaim the Netherlands victors in the semi-final – quickly spread around the internet. See the Drury penalty call below:

The view from Europe

We started this series of articles discussing the role of brands during the World Cup, and that was one of the themes in Europe as well. In many cities you were unable to move without noticing some form of localised World Cup branding, including the following example from Cyprus (which did not qualify).

Noticeable across Europe, though, were extensive World Cup decorations: from bars in basically every city, through to the large screens that inundated public squares, and – in the case of Amsterdam – a sea of orange which descended upon the city and sat above nearly every pathway in the Centrum.

And that’s the World Cup.

The authors do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. They also have no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Particularly interesting in the discussion of streaming figures is that such activity is able to be measured in “streaming minutes” or “data transferred” – much more specific metrics than traditional audience figures.

Accurate global TV ratings are still a way off, considering the official FIFA World Cup 2010 Audience Report came out almost a year after the tournament.

Twitter and ratings are undeniably connected, but the extent of the correlation often depends of the type of broadcast: whether it’s a live sporting event, soap opera finale or reality television show.

Indeed, a breakdown of the global tweets by timezone shows the dominance of US viewers in the Twitter conversation (including non-English hashtags):

Previous work by Nielsen has shown Sports, Reality TV and Comedy are genres where tweets have a causal relationship with viewer numbers, with Nielsen reporting that in 28% of sports programming measured, tweets had an impact on viewing numbers.

As we contended in last week’s article, it’s possible viewers tweet when bored, as well as when excited, during a game. But it is also possible that those not watching the game are also tweeting about it, so any correlation between ratings and tweets, for sporting events, needs a bit more research.

Match tweets

The US/World Cup love story continues in the graph below with the US vs Portugal match dominating match conversation for the week, and taking the lead in our “tweets by match” table.

ESPN also found that the:

USA vs Portugal contest on Sunday, June 22 is the most-viewed soccer match across all US television networks, averaging 18,220,000 viewers.

The top match in this graph has roughly a third more tweets than any match in the tournament so far, with top matches in previous weeks peaking at around 263,000.

It’s also possible from what we have discussed above that the Brazil vs Mexico match was bumped up by the large Mexican contingency located in the US timezones, as well as the enormous Brazil following on Twitter that we’ve seen in previous weeks.

The most talked-about event by far at the World Cup last week was the Luis Suarez bite.

The bite followed two other incidents of Suarez biting in the past, creating a storm of online conversation that can be seen in the visualisation of the most common words in tweets mentioning Suarez (note also the prominence of “Snickers”, a recurring example of brand impact on the World Cup):

The controversy around the bite mostly relates to whether Suarez intentionally bit the other player or just fell in an unfortunate position making it look like he bit him – as some Uruguayans have argued. Again, asking the question of whether video-technology should be more widely used in the game as recently discussed by Miguel Sicart.

Diego Maradona, the Argentinian whose hand-ball goal in the 1986 World Cup sparked much controversy said:

This is football, this is incidental contact […] They have no commonsense or a fan’s sensibility. Luisito, we are with you.

And a Reuters report notes:

The referee did not spot the incident during the match, but FIFA’s rules allow the use of video or “any other evidence” to punish players retrospectively.

Indeed FIFA did punish Suarez, announcing a nine-match ban on June 26 (the second spike visible in the graph below):

While the correlation is clear between real-time events and Twitter, the graph above quantifies just how vocal Twitter users have been around the Suarez incident, with the bite generating more than 3,500 tweets per minute at peak.

The lower volume for the announcement of the ban is also a signifier of the number of people watching the game(s) live and tweeting, versus those who use Twitter as a more general information source or discussion platform about the World Cup.

The authors do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. They also have no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Here, we look at the shift in conversation as the tournament begins to take shape – who is excited, bored or really winning on Twitter? – but first, a taste of what’s happening on social media in Brazil.

The opening ceremony and first match, Brazil vs Croatia, were huge successes on television and on social media. Brazilians, of course, probably talked about nothing else that day – but in Brazil, much of what was said was politicised.

FIFA was massively criticised for choosing a Belgian producer over Brazilians for the opening ceremony.

Francamente ! Na terra de Paulo Barros e Rosa Magalhães chamam um belga pra fazer uma bobagem de abertura destas!

— Leda Nagle (@Lnagle2) June 12, 2014

Translation: Honestly! In the land of Paulo Barros and Rosa Magalhães [two of the most successful Brazilian Carnival producers] they called a Belgian to do a silly opening like this!
– Leda Nagle, Brazilian journalist.

Another major disappointment was the disappearance on the official FIFA images of the moment that a paraplegic gave the initial kick-off using a mind-controlled exoskeleton built by the Brazilian scientist Miguel Nicolelis.

O genial exoesqueleto usado pelo rapaz que daria o primeiro chute infelizmente se perdeu na transmissão da abertura. Uma pena.

— Fernando Meirelles (@fmei7777) June 12, 2014

Translation: The exoskeleton worn by the guy that would do the kick-off unfortunately got lost in the opening broadcast. What a pity.
Source: Fernando Meirelles, Brazilian film-maker.

E teve exoesqueleto mesmo. Lamentável o desprezo total da transmissão ao que deveria ter o principal destaque. pic.twitter.com/PqDN9MUSEI

— Impedimento (@impedimento) June 12, 2014

Translation: And there was the exoskeleton indeed. Regrettable the complete disdain in the broadcast to something that should be in the spotlight.
Source: Impedimento, popular website dedicated to South American football and culture.

Still, others strongly criticised the crowd chants attacking the Brazilian president.

Parte do estádio grita: “Ê Dilma, vai tomar no c.. “. Outros gritam: “Ê Fifa, vai tomar no c…”

— Jamil Chade (@JamilChade) June 12, 2014

Translation: Part of the stadium shouts: hey, Dilma, f* off. Others shout: hey, Fifa, f* off.
Source: Jamil Chade, Brazilian journalist.

Updating the top matches

In our last article, we noted that Brazil vs Croatia was the most talked about match on its official hashtag (#BRAvsCRO), some distance ahead of England vs Italy, which was closely followed by Germany vs Portugal, Spain vs the Netherlands and Argentina vs Bosnia and Herzegovina. The updated chart, through the matches of June 21, looks as follows:

Of particular note here is that we have a new leader, in the Brazil vs Mexico match (an otherwise unspectacular 0-0 draw), with the Argentina vs Iran fixture (a 1-0 Argentina win, which Iran looked like winning at times) in second place.

The prominence of these two matches raises questions of whether people look to Twitter to fill in boring games, as well as to comment on exciting ones. The next three are familiar fixtures from the first week of matches.

Many of those at the bottom are the result of people using reversed hashtags in their tweets. Noticing this for the England vs Uruguay fixture, we also tracked the reverse hashtag specifically (#ENGvsURU), and recorded in excess of 27,000 tweets compared to 88,236 on the official hashtag (#URUvsENG).

So, while the official hashtags are performing as some form of marker, their success is not universal. One explanation for this is that while in Europe, the standard form is “Home Team vs Away Team”, for Americans the familiar format is “Away Team vs Home Team”, and so ordering hashtags for international audiences can be difficult.

What’s being shared?

Last time, we discussed how brands were dominating the conversation on official World Cup hashtags. This time, we’ll take a look at what is being shared on the match hashtags themselves.

As with last week’s data, we again see @worldsoccershop heavily represented, with their offer to give away free shirts if you retweet and a specific event happens (such as Ronaldo scoring in the Germany vs Portugal match) drawing a massive response.

Tellingly, the other tweets are largely dominated by US related content, the top two being ESPN responses (@Sportscenter being an ESPN-operated account) to the US’s victory over Ghana.

The first non-US tweet comes from the UK’s Sky Sports, and their @SkyFootball account, asking for responses on a penalty in the Brazil Game. Sky, interestingly, are not broadcasting the World Cup in the UK.

Other notables in the top 20 include celebrities such as Piers Morgan and Kobe Bryant, the US’s Comedy Channel (also not a World Cup broadcaster), asking Americans to “RT if you think WE WILL WIN”, and a quote from an unofficial Simpsons Quote Of The Day account, but really, @worldsoccershop was the huge winner.

The limitations of the 1%

As we discussed last time, the representativeness of Twitter research by those not subscribing to data providers such as GNIP is unclear with the World Cup, as Twitter traffic continually exceeds 1% of the total amount of tweets published at any particular time.

The flip-side of that limitation is we are able to graph the times at which conversation around the World Cup; through the team accounts, tournament hashtags, match hashtags and television hashtags we are tracking, exceeds that 1%, and by how far.

Of course, at any particular time, there are also many tweets relating to the World Cup which do not contain any of the previously mentioned identifiers:

The blue indicators in the graph above are the number of total tweets per second that exceeded 1% of total Twitter traffic.

Notable is that the World Cup is generating a smaller portion of the total Twitter traffic as it continues – which may not be much of a surprise – but also that while the opener generated the most prolonged period of >1% traffic, the matches on the morning of June 14 AEST (the matches of June 13 in Brazil) were the most prolific of the tournament on a per-second basis, with a particular peak during Spain’s demolition by the Netherlands.

It has yet to be seen how the next phase of the tournament will play out, and least of all what role Twitter will play; whether as a tool for excitement or boredom.

The authors do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. They also have no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

by Darryl Woodford & Katie Prowd

The 2014 World Cup has already seen a significant volume of Twitter conversation across a number of (English language) keywords, including #joinin, #worldcup, #Brazil2014 and #worldcup2014, as well as the Twitter-marketed international hashtags:

• #Brasil2014 (Spanish)
• #Brésil2014 (French)
• #wm2014 (German)
• #Copa2014 (Portugese)
• #mm2014 (Finnish).

And unsurprisingly, riding this wave of hashtags are the brands that look to profit from the tournament – whether they’re official sponsors or not.

With the launch of a new interface designed to promote World Cup discussion, Twitter is actively encouraging users to flag support for their national team and to participate in World Cup discussion through Twitter.

On the opening day of the games Twitter presented a new layout, as well as a step-by-step process encouraging people to tweet their support for their team and change their profile image:

After clicking “Let’s go!” on the page above, users are escorted through a number of personalised set up pages; from selecting their national team and changing their profile picture:

… through to following favourite players, and even preparing a tweet using the #WorldCup hashtag and the account of your national team:

While these are obvious promotional tools, they have likely contributed to the increase in followers for many players, as well as the Twitter activity around the tournament in general.

While the BBC’s Gary Lineker on Tuesday described Brazil 2014 on air as “the first social media world cup”, South Africa 2010 also saw plenty of social media activity. However the impact of social media on traditional media coverage is particularly prominent in the UK at the moment.

Twitter has also been documenting the tournament through its blog and tweets from the TwitterData account. For researchers, replicating such analysis is difficult as World Cup-related tweets frequently exceed the limit of 1% of tweets that be freely accessed through the Twitter API. Despite this, there are a few notable stories from week one.

Brands seek to capitalise on World Cup audience

While it’s clear that the World Cup is a brand marketing exercise, the lead up to the tournament demonstrated how the brand is being appropriated for marketing purposes on social media, far beyond the official sponsors.

And while using the World Cup brand in traditional media may see offending companies hit with a lawsuit, using the social media hashtag appears to be a risk worth taking.

FIFA have not taken trademark infringement lightly either, officially releasing a warning in March stating that

The contribution of FIFA’s commercial affiliates is vital to the success of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and we therefore ask companies to refrain from attempts to free-ride on the huge public interest generated by the event.

Yet according to Alex Benady from PR Week:

FIFA, players, the media, the FA and other national associations, and of course brands with no contractual relationship with the World Cup, will all be working their social media networks for all they are worth.

Supporting this, the 20th most popular retweet in the week leading up to the World Cup using English keywords was the following from (unaffiliated) British company Fragrance Direct:

Other brands, sponsors and otherwise are also heavily represented in the most frequent retweets:

The top 25 tweets above contain many brands (including FIFA sponsors such as Adidas, Budweiser and EA Sports, as well as non-sponsors such as Goldman Sachs and Fragrance Direct), able to associate with the World Cup brand on social media on an equal basis.

While the brands may see this as merely interacting with a current event, for those at FIFA and for paying sponsors, this may well appear as ambush marketing.

Such trends extended into the first week of the tournament, with the top retweets over the first week notably also dominated by big brands and television networks:

Top 10 matches

With the first round underway, we can also see which matches (and teams) are receiving the most attention on Twitter:

This tells an interesting visual story of not only the top matches but also how the worldwide audience is using Twitter during the World Cup.

While the top match to date is (perhaps predictably) the opener of the tournament – Brazil vs Croatia – the presence of England vs Italy as the second may speak both to the audience participating in the hashtag conversation and the international interest in the game itself.

As the tournament continues, it will be interesting to correlate tweet volume with television audiences worldwide, as those figures become available, and to consider whether the teams with the most historic World Cup success, or FIFA Ranking, are those receiving the most attention this time around, both on Twitter and on television.

Other stories from around the web

Elsewhere on the web, analysis of both social media and statistical data around the world cup is gathering steam. Kimono Labs have launched what they claim to be the first open World Cup API, while the Regressing Blog on Deadspin features a round-up of the top prediction models on the web.

Also of interest this week is the CartoDB visualisation of Twitter activity around the World Cup opening match, and Twitter’s own visualisation of the increase in Neymar’s followers, part of their extensive coverage of the opener which also includes the Predictaroo.

We’ll be back after Round 2 with some more from the ground in Europe and Brazil, as well as the latest data from our Twitter Machines, and a look at how TV stations are using Twitter in the early stages.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

by Darryl Woodford & Katie Prowd

This column will cover everything from the pre-tournament build up and tournament hashtags, the matches themselves, and other trends as they emerge (such as #imnotgoingtobrazilbecause). We will bring you the stats from Australia, where Katie Prowd is operating the Twitter Machines, supplemented by the colour from Brazil (with our colleague Ana Vimiero), and Europe, where Darryl Woodford and other colleagues are attending a range of conferences across Europe.

Anticipation Building

Generally, a look at the official keywords shows building anticipation, and burgeoning national pride. Particularly over the past two days, we have seen a significant, albeit predictable, uptick in conversation around the (English language) keywords we have been monitoring, primarily (for pre-tournament purposes) #joinin, #worldcup, @Brazil2014 and #worldcup2014:

Running total of tweets using generic World Cup hashtags

As the tournament begins, we are also be tracking the official generic hashtags announced by Twitter for different languages – #Brasil2014 (Spanish), #Brésil2014 (French), #wm2014 (German), #Copa2014 (Portugese) and #mm2014 (Finnish) – to identify any key trends.

A co-hashtag analysis, showing the hashtags which have emerged alongside those we have been tracking, suggests some of the prominent themes in the lead up to the World Cup. Brazil, Football and FIFA have been particularly evident, with football notably ahead of ‘soccer’. Also prominent amongst the top 25 are ‘futbol’, the local ‘brasil2014’ hashtag, as well as FIFA2014, England, Brasil (and ‘Bra’), Germany, and the Arabic for World Cup, كاس_العالم, , offering some insight into the loyalties and nationalities of those fans engaging in the discussion:

Brands dominate pre-tournament Twitter

Building on the social media marketing seen in the 2010 World Cup, Brazil’s 2014 World Cup is set to change the face of real-time marketing and be the most social live event in history. While some traditional advertising will still be in play, spend and focus on digital engagement will take the lead for the first time, with some of the bigger brands announcing fully-staffed 24-hour newsrooms, aka war rooms, dedicated to the social conversation on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (expected to be the most used platform for experiential engagement).

While sure it’s news to nobody that the World Cup is a brand marketing exercise, the lead up to the tournament has shown both how pervasive the World Cup brand is, and how it is being appropriated for marketing purposes on social media, and not just by official sponsors such as Emirates.

Emirates planes decked out for the World Cup; here at Hamburg Airport, Germany (photo: Darryl Woodford)

While appropriating the World Cup brand in traditional media would likely see offending companies on the receiving end of a lawsuit, social media, and ‘ambush marketing’ appears to be a risk worth taking. We have seen trademark disputes again and again in traditional advertising, including a recent case when the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) took legal action against the North Face for producing a clothing line using the “RU 14” logo although they were completely unaffiliated with the Canadian Olympic Team.

FIFA has not taken trademark infringement lightly either, officially releasing a warning in March stating that “The contribution of FIFA’s commercial affiliates is vital to the success of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and we therefore ask companies to refrain from attempts to free-ride on the huge public interest generated by the event.”

Yet according to Alex Benady from PR Week, “FIFA, players, the media, the FA and other national associations, and of course brands with no contractual relationship with the World Cup, will all be working their social media networks for all they are worth.” Supporting this, the 20th most popular retweet over the previous week in the lead up to the World Cup – at least using English keywords – is the following from (unaffiliated) British company Fragrance Direct:

Screenshot: Twitter

Other brands, sponsors and otherwise are also heavily represented in the most frequent retweets:

Top total retweets containing generic World Cup hashtags (brands in green); June 5 – June 12

As you can see from the graphic above, the top 25 tweets contain both many brands (including FIFA sponsors such as Adidas, Budweiser and EA Sports, as well as non-sponsors such as Goldman Sachs and Fragrance Direct); able to associate with the World Cup brand on social media on an equal basis. As discussed previously, while some may see this as merely interacting with a current event, for those at FIFA and paying sponsors, this may well appear as ambush marketing.

While it’s hard to tell at this stage who will prevail in the somewhat uncharted waters of a global digital and social media campaign, it will be interesting to see whether this guides the way for more regulation or more freedom on hashtag use for advertising. Either way, the coming weeks on the Twitter Machines and on the ground in Europe are definitely going to tell a significant story in the history of social media; for marketing and for interaction with live events.

On with the matches

And with that all said, let the matches begin; Aussie Aussie Aussie; Eng-er-land; Auf geht’s Deutschland, schiess ein Tor! .. or good luck to whoever you follow!

From selling grooming products (Nivea, left) to tickets to watch matches in the local stadium, the World Cup and German colours are everywhere (photos: Darryl Woodford)