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Reaching out, Twitter style
The World Cup is on course to become a watershed event for social media networking, but popular microblogging site Twitter has been struggling to cope.
The World Cup is on course to become a watershed event for social media networking, but popular microblogging site Twitter has been struggling to cope.
So popular has the platform become since its launch in 2006 that even FIFA president Sepp Blatter has opened an account to “connect with football fans” — twitter.com/seppblatter.
“It is the first FIFA World Cup in which social media websites will play an important role in connecting everyone who cares about the game of football,” he said.
“I'm very excited to be sharing my own personal experience of the 2010 FIFA World Cup with football fans from all over the world.”
FIFA is also providing match updates via Twitter, and players have been logging in.
But traffic spikes have overwhelmed capacity, exposing internal flaws, as record numbers of people tweet.
“We're working through tweaks to our system in order to provide greater stability at a time when we're facing record traffic,” said Twitter spokesman Sean Garrett.
Players have been tweeting, including Kaka and Luis Fabiano, Nicolas Anelka, Diego Forlan and about half of the USA team.
