Days before the opening of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Facebook and Twitter have launched tournament coverage areas. Both social networks figure to have a big presence in the way people watch and follow the action and they are understandably trying to capitalize on that with some custom features.
Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has launched a page that aggregates popular public posts about the World Cup and features a match tracker. Also unveiled was a fan map, which shows a geographic breakdown of the fans of 10 prominent player Facebook pages. For example, it shows that Cristiano Ronaldo, the world’s most followed player on Facebook, has 84 million fans. What might surprise is that by Facebook’s data, he’s huge in Sri Lanka, where his popularity is 20.5% “above average.”
Twitter is using the World Cup as a chance to sign up new users, enticing people to join by giving new accounts the opportunity to declare allegiance to a country and select a pre-made image as a new avatar. Twitter has also created a custom World Cup hub for the tournament and for individual matches. You can also now tweet to include a country’s flag, a feature called “hashflags” that was in use during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Pop star Shakira showed the feature off in what appears to be a coordinated launch for the product. Twitter will use these mentions in its “World Cup of Tweets,” which will go live on Thursday.
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Facebook and Twitter Launch World Cup Hubs
Days before the opening of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Facebook and Twitter have launched tournament coverage areas. Both social networks figure to have a big presence in the way people watch and follow the action and they are understandably trying to capitalize on that with some custom features.
Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has launched a page that aggregates popular public posts about the World Cup and features a match tracker. Also unveiled was a fan map, which shows a geographic breakdown of the fans of 10 prominent player Facebook pages. For example, it shows that Cristiano Ronaldo, the world’s most followed player on Facebook, has 84 million fans. What might surprise is that by Facebook’s data, he’s huge in Sri Lanka, where his popularity is 20.5% “above average.”
Twitter is using the World Cup as a chance to sign up new users, enticing people to join by giving new accounts the opportunity to declare allegiance to a country and select a pre-made image as a new avatar. Twitter has also created a custom World Cup hub for the tournament and for individual matches. You can also now tweet to include a country’s flag, a feature called “hashflags” that was in use during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Pop star Shakira showed the feature off in what appears to be a coordinated launch for the product. Twitter will use these mentions in its “World Cup of Tweets,” which will go live on Thursday.
Read it all.