World Cup 2014: Five things more popular than J-Lo
Viewers all over the world tuned in last night to watch an action-packed World Cup opening game in Brazil, and millions were simultaneously glued to Twitter to share tournament highs and lows. Joe Faul, Research and insight director at We Are Social, takes a look at what got footie fans excited on day one of the social World Cup.In case you hadn't heard, there's a World Cup going on. The opening ceremony took place last night, with a performance by pop 'megastars' Pitbull and Jennifer Lopez. J-Lo announced her impending performance to a somewhat lukewarm response - 4,000 retweets from nearly 28m followers (or 0.01 per cent, if you know your engagement rates).
I love #Brazil! I am so excited to join @pitbull & @claudialette to celebrate #WorldCup2014 #JLoAKA #JLoJune17 pic.twitter.com/h2j1lesJHk
— Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) June 11, 2014 Here's a collection of World Cup related things from last night that were slightly more popular.1. A Japanese refereeSince March, the name "Nishimura" has been used 165,000 times – and 60 per cent of those mentions came last night. Although Neymar and Oscar’s goals made them the evening’s most talked-about players, our man of the match goes to referee Yuichi Nishimura, mentioned 400k times on Twitter.If it stays like this biggest hero in Brazil tonight wil be Referee Yuichi Nishimura of Japan #WorldCup2014
— John Cushing (@JohnCushing_) June 12, 2014
Neymar outdid him with 2.3m mentions, but the numbers aren’t bad for an unknown Japanese guy (and definitely better than J-Lo). 2. BrazucaA football. It was a big day for Brazuca, gaining a whopping 400k followers in the past 24 hours. That's even more than Neymar (165k) and, it’s definitely more than J-Lo (30k). It's a ball that tweets - what's not to like?I’m @brazuca, match ball of the 2014 FIFA #WorldCup. Yes I’m a ball. Yes I’m tweeting. Join me on my journey! #ballin pic.twitter.com/KerKWgFdez
— brazuca (@brazuca) December 3, 2013
3. A can of sprayWhen an aerosol can came out last night, there were rumours that Banksy had finally unmasked himself. My God. The ref's Banksy.
— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) June 12, 2014
It transpired that it was just the referee, equipped with vanishing spray to line up free kicks. It captured the imagination of Twitter, keen to believe in the tagging abilities of the officials - the spray was mentioned almost 20k times. I've never been more excited. Refs tagging shit UP! #thugrefs #streetart
— Dan Moseley (@danmoselee) June 12, 2014
With only one mention, #thugrefs hasn't quite taken Twitter by storm yet, but if it does, you heard it here first.4. Football! And the social World CupThis probably won't be the most earth-shattering insight you read today, but the World Cup had a huge impact on the social activity in the two countries playing last night. Based on average volume of Thursday Twitter activity, Brazil and Croatia increased by 25 per cent and 31 per cent respectively. The World Cup matters and we’re (almost) all talking about it. 5.@MarcelloAngry football fans vent frustrations at wrong Marcelo after Brazil's own goal http://t.co/gG4UY5IeDQ
— ITV News (@itvnews) June 13, 2014
Poor Marcello Ferri. One minute you're an unheard of male model working out in the gym, the next you're receiving death threats for scoring an own goal in the World Cup after being confused for Marcelo Vieira, tweeting from the less obvious @12marcelov. Some people were perplexed that he managed to tweet whilst playing. It could happen to anyone. The poor guy's plea for the abuse to aimed at the player's account was RT'd over 11k times.