World Cup smashes Facebook, Twitter records
The World Cup final was the most-discussed sporting event ever for Facebook
Germany produced just one goal in its win over Argentina in Sunday's World Cup final. But the game produced a record number of Facebook and Twitter posts.
According to Twitter, there were a record 618,725 tweets per minute at one point during Germany's 1-0 win, outpacing the 580,166 tweets-per-minute peak during Germany’s 7-1 semifinal victory over Brazil.
Overall, there were 32.1 million tweets about the game sent during the telecast, Twitter said, or about 3.5 million shy of the record 35.6 million generated during Germany's drubbing of Brazil.
Twitter even produced a global heat map of the tweets sent during Sunday's final.
As impressive as those Twitter numbers were, Sunday's game was even a bigger hit for Facebook.
The World Cup final was the most-discussed sporting event ever on Facebook, with an estimated 280 million interactions — likes, posts and comments — from 88 million users about the game. That's roughly 35 million more interactions than the record 245 million established during the 2013 Super Bowl, Facebook said.
The monthlong World Cup generated 3 billion Facebook interactions overall.
"We knew the World Cup was going to be big, but this level of engagement is remarkable," Nick Grudin, Facebook's director of global media partnerships, told Reuters. "It was the highest level of conversation around a single event that we have ever measured."
