How do you type 'goal' in Spanish? Can you say 'repetitive stress injury'?
Facebook's data team reports that World Cup watching users are having quite the O-gasms when they post news of goals.
- Ed was a member of the CNET crew that won a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors for general excellence online. He's also edited pieces that've nabbed prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and others.
Goooooooooooooooooooool!
Think that was a wildly extravagant expenditure of Os? Nope. Apparently it's about average. At least if you're a Venezuelan Facebook user turning to the social network to celebrate yet another, er, goooooooooooooooooooool by a South American team in the World Cup.
In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook Data Analyst Dustin Cable runs through several interesting World Cup tidbits culled from the company's data banks.
In the O-de to Joy Department, it seems Venezuelan posters to the social network are the most profligate in stretching out the word "gol," inserting an average of 21.2 of the little futbol-shaped characters between the "g" (with its kicking foot) and the "l" (which looks suspiciously like a goal post).
After that, the list runs like this: the West African country of Gabon goes in for an average of 18.4 Os, North Africa's Tunisia likes 13.4, Mexico is surprisingly restrained with 12.8, and the Balkan country of Montenegro follows suit with 12.8. Shaving off the decimals, that information creates its own little infographic of sorts:
goooooooooooooooooooool!
gooooooooooooooooool!
goooooooooooool!
gooooooooooool!
gooooooooooool!
But, really, these fans need to try much, much harder. Facebook's Cable reports that the most resounding O-gasm was produced on June 25 by an Argentinian, who, after foreward Lionel Messi bested Nigerian goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama on a free kick, shouted his joy to his Facebook friends with an impressively long exclamation indeed.
Argentinians are, after all, known for their love of the accordion (well, the bandoneon). This one, whoever he might be, accordion-ed out the word "gol" to the tune of 20,400 Os. Cable reports that you'd have to hold down the O key for about 12 minutes to make that happen. (To jump from Facebook to Twitter, you'd have to send something like 145 separate tweets to get the same effect.)
Other World Cup factoids from Facebook's data team include the following.
"Soccer" is the most prevalent term used for the game in posts and comments, followed, in order, by "Football," "Fútbol" (Spanish), "Futebol" (Portuguese), and "Futbol."
The Top Five terms for "goal" are as follows:
And finally, tournament host Brazil seems, not surprisingly, to have lit up Facebook during the matches. Six of the Top 10 post- and comment-inspiring moments (as of Cable's writing) involved goals by the home team. Of the remaining four post-inducing episodes, three had to do with goals by Mexico, and the remaining one occurred when Uruguay scored against Italy (which ultimately meant Uruguay went through to the Round of 16). You can read about the moments in more detail in Cable's blog item, here.