World Cup all the rage on social media

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World Cup all the rage on social media
Kornchanok Raksaseri @Aim_NT

The World Cup in Brazil, which kicked off early yesterday morning (Thailand time) and will run for a month, grabbed the attention of social media users both here and around the world.

Social media providers did not miss a chance to ride on this wave. Twitter promotes '#WorldCup on Twitter: Love every second' with features that act as an ultimate guide for followers, who are able to choose the team they support and closely follow the movements of their team, plus the "hashflags" (small flag) of teams are also available to make any tweet more colorful.

FIFA also uses social media to connect with fans. @FIFAWorldCup Twitter account provides updates from Brazil provided by the official site of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. It has about 1.3 million followers.

In Thailand, fans have come together to show their colours. For example, @LarojaTH is for supporters of Spain and @DFB_TH is for Germany.

Facebook launched a "Trending World Cup" page as a data-hub, which collects schedules, links and posts about the tournament. Many come from news media sports sections, which provide nice photos.

On Facebook, FIFA World Cup page has had over 23 million Likes.

Meanwhile, Apple launched a new "Soccer Fever" section in its app store before the event, and these are also available for Android on Google Play.

Google is providing a real-time guide to the players, teams and moments of the cup. Data about searches about the game or related topics at the moment are available at www.google.com/

trends/worldcup.

The Wall Street Journal has come up with "World Cup of Everything Else," interesting points about the countries and 32 teams, and which one would win if they were competing in other ways. Some examples were the US would win if they were competing on the highest population as they have 318.9 million people, highest among those at the cup. Meanwhile, England would win for having the lowest traffic death rate at about 3.7 per 100,000 people. Other topics can be reached at http://graphics.wsj.com/

documents/WORLDCUPTOEE/.

The World Cup in Brazil has also been met with protests and some chaos which people are following. Likewise, in Thailand, if you put gamblers aside, you will still find serious comments about this event, as social media users have different opinions about the controversial decision to allow sponsorship so live broadcasts of all matches are shown on free TV channels.

Wit Sittivaekin said millions of baht spent on broadcasting all matches at the World Cup was better than billions of baht spent on benefits for board members of state enterprises.

Time Chuastapanasiri posed six questions for the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) tarting with: "If you think World Cup 2014 is an activity of public interest and you insist to use the money from the NBTC fund which is public money…"

Time asked for revelation of the sum of money RS International Broadcasting and Sport Management bid for the broadcast licence and how the NBTC came to the Bt427 million figure for compensation.

MrDonkey Man posted, "For the people who do not watch football but like to watch boxing, Thai boxing, World Boxing or the people who love Korean dramas, will they get public budget too?"

Pakorn Penparkkul posted that after this, Thai businesses should stop bidding for such licences and voluntarily join hands to bid as a TV Pool on behalf of Thailand, to save money for Thai people.

-- The Nation 2014-06-14

[ggt]

World Cup is a wonderful diversion from the problems which have faced this country for the past several months...

It gives people something to laugh about...and talk about...other than the color of politics...

Have a beer and join the fun...heck you might even buy a lady a drink...she's probably thirsty with all the shouting going on...