World Cup final sets Facebook and Twitter records

The final of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil has set usage records on Facebook and Twitter. Twitter broke the record for number of tweets per minute, while Facebook saw more interactions around a single event than ever.

Both Facebook and Twitter reported Monday that the World Cup final caused spikes in the use of social networks. On Facebook, 88 million people worldwide generated 280 million ‘interactions’, which is a collection of messages, comments and likes. This makes the World Cup final the most talked about sporting event in Facebook’s history. The previous record holder was the 2013 Superbowl XLVII with 245 million interactions. The global football tournament was already popular on Facebook; On June 30, Facebook announced that more than a billion interactions had already been placed about the World Cup.

The popularity of the World Cup was also clear on Twitter visible. A total of 31.1 million tweets about the match were posted. The tweets-per-minute record, which was already broken during the semi-final between Brazil and Germany, was set at more than 618,000 tweets per minute during the final battle between Argentina and Germany. That number was reached at the end of the match, when it was clear that Germany was the new world champion. That effect can also be seen in a special, geotag-based heatmap that Twitter published after the final.

The World Cup saw a significant increase in the tweets-per-minute record from the previous record, which was held by the 2013 American MTV Video Music Awards, where the number of tweets per minute during Miley Cyrus’ performance surpassed 360,000. went. Previously, the record was set in the re-election of US President Obama and the performance of the Spice Girls at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.