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Fifa World Cup

Spain may have lifted the trophy, but who won the Social Media World Cup?

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

July 13, 2010 | 4 min read

With growing digital media consumption through smartphones and other devices, this World Cup was unlike any to have come before – with excitement around games happening not only in the bus queue, at work or in the pub, but increasingly online too.

Social media monitoring by Alterian’s SM2 tracked online noise and sentiment across social media and online channels from the opening ceremony right through to the final whistle, analysing noise levels in relation to country internet usage, with a total of 1870085 conversations tracked online.

So, what has been happening off the pitch for the last month, and who has been making the most noise?

Here are just some of the findings:

• Germany displayed the most positive sentiment online and the least amount of negative feeling, with Germany being the only word to be pulled out of the wordless, to suggest it was the most talked about country throughout the World Cup, even beating the hosts, South Africa. They also ranked 4th in terms of volume of conversations by the end of the games

• However their grumpy neighbours in France were not quite so supportive it seems and clearly didn’t react well to the French knockout, with the least percentage of positive comment and having the highest negative sentiment (28%)

• Most of those countries that got through to the final 16 were reflected by the highest levels of conversations online (see below rankings and attached tables 1-3) However generally Ghana, Paraguay and Uruguay were all fairly low ranked even though they were all in the semis – this is most likely down to the low internet usage in these countries rather than lack of support

• Despite this – Uruguay’s support did improve from rank 23 at the start to 17 at the end (reflecting their 4th position)

• Surprisingly, Argentina came in a low 27 in terms of conversation volume overall - despite the national focus on football, getting to the semi finals and having an average internet usage of 20,000,000

• South Africa has average internet usage (ranked 18 here) but has high noise density (ranked number 1) and the third highest percentage of positive comment (30%)– clearly reflecting the support of the games from the proud host country

• Most noise occurred across microblogs (including Twitter), with 40% of all conversations

• FriendFeed was identified as by far the most popular site for Footie chatter, with a total of 29430 (next highest was just 6944)

• Twitter went crazy around the opening ceremony and then dropped down to a fairly consistent level throughout but remaining the most popular site to share news and opinions of the games

• Conversation levels consistently dropped throughout the games as we saw more teams being knocked out and more disheartened supporters

• SM2 suggests that the games are predominantly still a man’s game with almost ¾ of posts from men - 70% men and 30% women

• As you’d expect – most comments were posted by 18-34 year olds – who are the most active online users and well as the age group most likely to follow football

The complete results of the SM2 social media monitoring research is available to MiNetwork members.

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