The 2010 World Cup is going to be a very interesting one as far as social media goes — it’s the first to be played out in the Twitter era and the first to fully embrace the social media universe.
This bodes well for avid soccer fans keen to stay up to date with all the most recent news from their favorite players and teams. The real-time nature of Twitter may well entice these newcomers to hop on the micro-blogging site. To get new users ready for the action, we’ve got a few tips for how to follow the World Cup on Twitter complete with a list of who you should be following to stay informed on the games, news, and goings on in South Africa.
Hashtags and Searches
While Twitter’s hashtag system is a great way of monitoring a certain topic, and for getting real-time updates on what the Twitterverse is saying about a live event, the organic nature of exactly how the tags are decided can cause confusion.
Currently, there seems to be a fair amount of footie-related tags in circulation, although we’d imagine by the first few days of the tournament these will be narrowed down as the most popular ones become trending topics and are adopted by tweeters.
At the moment, #worldcup seems to be the largest tag by volume of tweets, but #wc2010 is also doing the rounds, as is #2010worldcup. Don’t forget, however, that the World Cup is a global event, so different languages also come into play. In Spanish, World Cup is “Copa Mundial,” in French it’s “Coupe du Monde,” and so on.
Other tags have, of course, sprung up around teams. #England is what most people are using to refer to the England team, while mentions of the United States team can be found under the tag #USMNT.
To quickly access a stream of tweets containing a certain hashtag you can save a search on Twitter, so that the results are just a click away from your home page — and the search can be easily removed after it’s no longer relevant.
Lists
The World Cup only lasts for a month, so it’s unlikely you’ll want to permanently follow all the World Cup-related sources you’ll be getting your footie news from over the next four weeks, especially as many sources have been created solely for the event.
Alternatively, if you’re just interested in the big headlines, rather than blow-by-blow coverage, TweetMeme’s World Cup 2010 aggregated feed of popular tweets might be of interest.
It’s more work, but if you’re a little more selective then you can create your own list and simply delete it after the tournament on July 11. To get you started we’ve made some suggestions of World Cup Twitter news resources that can be found below.
Twitter Resources
Whether it’s the official FIFA feed, tabloid newspaper coverage, big broadcaster’s headlines or just the final scores, you’ll find the news you need in this list.
2010 FIFA World Cup – “The Twitter page of the 2010 Organizing Committee.” News and updates.
SA2010 World Cup – “Official 2010 FIFA World Cup South African Government website with all the information you need!” News, personal updates and commentary.
FIFAWorldCupTM – “The FIFA soccer world cup tweets. All the latest FIFA news and information on the 2010 soccer world cup.” Updates, human interest, emphasis on players and coaches.
TheFA.com – “The official website for the England Football Team and The FA Cup.” Updates on England players and live Tweets from England matches.
US Soccer – “U.S. Soccer: the governing body of soccer in all its forms in the United States.” Inside look at the US team, players and matches.
CNN World Cup – “All the latest news on the 2010 World Cup in South Africa from CNN International.” News and match scores culled from CNN reporters.
Telegraph World Cup – “World Cup 2010 news, analysis, pictures and video from Telegraph.co.uk” Links back to stories posted by The Telegraph.
NY Times Goal – “The New York Times Soccer Blog reports on the international game and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.” Live updates and links back to New York Times stories.
AP World Cup – “Join the conversation as @AP covers the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.” News, match scores and brief commentary.
BBC World Cup – “A feed dedicated to World Cup headlines from the BBC website.” Links back to BBC.
Sports Illustrated Soccer – “Soccer, World Cup coverage from Sports Illustrated and SI.com writers and photographers.” Player news and general features.
The Sun World Cup – “Follow all the latest news on the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with The Sun.” Mostly England updates and news, general match coverage.
Four Four Two – “Humorous but wholehearted, polished but readable, substantial but accessible, it’s football’s most insightful brand – with added F.U.N.” Quirky and off-beat updates, general news.
Fox Soccer News – “FOXSoccer.com headlines.” Links back to Fox Soccer.
World Cup Scores – “Live 2010 world cup soccer scores.” Match scores and live updates.
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