World Cup final sets records on Facebook, Twitter
Germany vs. Argentina proves to be the biggest sporting event in Facebook's history, while Twitter says the game generated the most tweets per minute.
The World Cup final on Sunday between Germany and Argentina was a hot topic on both Facebook and Twitter, the companies revealed on Monday.
Facebook announced that the game was the biggest sporting event ever on the social network, generating 280 million interactions (which include posts, comments, and likes) related to the sporting event. Surprisingly, just 88 million people were able to generate that much action on the service. Overall, the World Cup generated 3 billion transactions across Facebook during the month it was held. Over 350 million people interacted with others about the sporting event.
Twitter offered up similar data on Monday, saying that 32.1 million tweets were sent during the World Cup final. The game also set a record for most tweets per minute, hitting nearly 619,000 after Germany prevailed.
Both Twitter and Facebook were quick to offer up statistics about the popularity of the World Cup on their networks over the last month. Twitter's @TwitterData account became a repository for daily information on tweeting on the World Cup, providing valuable insight into exactly what its users cared most about.
Although the final was the most popular in terms of tweets per minute, it failed to match an earlier game between Brazil and Germany. Twitter reported last week that that game was the most popular sporting event ever on its service, generating 35.6 million tweets during the match. That game was the second-most-talked-about on Facebook behind Sunday's final.
Some other interesting Facebook tidbits: people between the ages of 18 and 24 were most likely to say something about the World Cup over the last month and Argentina was the most-talked-about team.