How Twitter came into its own during the World Cup

Jul 17, 2010 by Dirk Singer

The other week Twitter reported that the record for the number of tweets per second was broken, when there were 3283 during the Japan / Denmark match at the World Cup.

Surprisingly, even though Twitter says on its blog that the final Spain – Netherlands match “represented the largest period of sustained activity for an event in Twitter’s history”, the actual number of tweets per second for Spain’s winning goal was lower at 3051.

However, the World Cup again shows that while Foursquare is still in danger of being a Second Life style phenomenon that is popular and fizzes out, Twitter has found several real and useful roles.

One is that so-called influencers who are able to take conversations elsewhere over-index on it.   Another is that it comes into its own during live TV events – such as the World Cup – where the shared social experience adds to what you are watching on the box.

Twitter has produced a number of interesting infographics.   The wordle image below is the final Spain goal in tweets and in different languages:

And finally, an image showing how Twitter use grew during the competition itself (click on image for larger size):

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• World Cup an event of unmatched tweeting (theglobeandmail.com)
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