What the World Cup conversations told us – about us
Whatever you think about football, this year’s World Cup has provided a fascinating insight into how the supporters from different countries respond, not least using social media, smart phones and the internet.
Increasing amounts of people are consuming and sharing information across social media platforms which is unlike any other World Cup that came before and this is providing fascinating insight into behaviour, opinions and beliefs.
A survey by Alterian, using its SM2 social media monitoring tool found that Germans displayed the most positive sentiment online, and the least amount of negative feeling and that the German team was the most talked about country throughout the World Cup, even beating the hosts, South Africa.
The French, predictably, were not quite so supportive of their team, showing 28% negative sentiment.
There were some obvious findings:
• Those countries that got through to the final 16 were the subject of the highest levels of conversations online. However generally Ghana, Paraguay and Uruguay were all fairly low ranked even though they were all in the semis – which is most likely down to the low internet usage in these countries rather than lack of support
• Despite this – Uruguay’s support did improve from rank 23 at the start to 17 at the end (reflecting their 4th position)
• South Africa had average internet usage (ranked 18 here) but has high noise density (ranked number 1) and the third highest percentage of positive comment (30%)– clearly reflecting the support of the games from the proud host country
• Most noise occurred across microblogs (including Twitter), with 40% of all conversations (Graph 5)
• FriendFeed was identified as by far the most popular site for Footie chatter, with a total of 29430 (next highest was just 6944)
• Twitter went crazy around the opening ceremony and then dropped down to a fairly consistent level throughout but remaining the most popular site to share news and opinions of the games
• Conversation levels consistently dropped throughout the games as we saw more teams being knocked out and more disheartened supporters
• SM2 suggests that the games are predominantly still a man’s game with almost ¾ of posts from men – 70% men and 30% women (Graph 1)
• As you’d expect – most comments were posted by 18-34 year olds – who are the most active online users and well as the age group most likely to follow football
Alterian’s SM2 social media monitoring tool can track online noise and sentiment across an infinite number of social media and online channels and tracks sources across all countries and languages – a key differentiator to all other online monitoring services. The analysis is taken from the opening ceremony right through to the final whistle and tracks noise levels in relation to country internet usage, rather than one overall figure, as clearly a US vs New Zealand or UK vs Ghana comparison would not be a fair match)
Throughout the games, SM2 tracked a total of 1,870,085 conversations online.
Further breakdown: Who’s been talking where?
• Brazilians clearly use blogs to communicate and share info online (52%), whereas France like a more in depth analysis and insight through forums (40%)
• Noise on facebook or other social networking sites was very low (highest was 11% of US noise and only 0.2% of UK chatter)
• Similarly low is photo/video sharing sites – most common around the World cup in Italy (9%)
• Twitter (microblogs) have well and truly become the most popular way to share info online with by far the highest scores – especially in Japan and South Africa (87% and 84% respectively). 41% of Brits talked about the World Cup on Twitter but the French are clearly not adopting Twitter to the same extent as they don’t even appear on the scoreboard
• Top 5 international sites where conversations have been happening
Ø FriendFeed
Ø bukaji
Ø live stream online
Ø MP3BarWCnews (MP3 Bar WorldCupNews)
Ø FIFA World Cup 2010
• Lowest internet usage:
Ø Ghana
Ø Honduras
Ø Paraguay
Ø Cameroon
Ø Cote D’Ivoire