Six World Cup social media highlights

Facebook is the busiest social network for World Cup-related activity, according to a study by digital marketing agency Global Web Index. The study covered fans in the United States, United Kingdom and Brazil on the opening match has found that 93 percent of them have used Facebook to check results or to post their impressions about the events. 

According to Facebook, the opening Work Cup match was followed by 58 million people and about 140 million messages were exchanged during the event. Brazilians represented a 30 percent share of Facebook traffic that day. 

Twitter was used by 59 percent of soccer fans during the World Cup opening match, according to a Global Web Index study. All the 32 national squads had accounts active as the World Cup started, including Iran, a country notoriously restrictive in terms of social media use.

During the Brazil and Chile match, 16.4 million tweets sent during one game, making it the largest sporting event ever commented on the social network. The missed Chilean penalty kick earned 389 thousand tweets per minute, surpassing the last Superbowl event by 7,000 posts over the same period.

Brazil is the World Cup host for the first time since 1950 - and as expected the Brazilian players have dominated the Twitter charts. On the day of the opening ceremony alone, the Twitter profile of Brazilian footballer Neymar, who already had an audience of more than 11 million people, got 165,000 new followers. He gets an average of 75,000 new followers daily. However France - in particular Paul Pogba - have seen one of the greatest increases in Twitter followers, according to numbers released by the microblogging tool. 

On the mobile messaging front, Global Web Index data suggests that mobile communications tool WhatsApp was used by 57 percent of World Cup followers on the opening match. Most of the content (74 percent) was related to the final result of the matches, followed by goals (73 percent). Communications app Viber  has seen a surge in the volume in calls and messages during the World Cup,  with a 1,000 percent increase in calls made from Brazil and a 40 percent uplift in messages.