Brazil Defeat Sets Twitter Alight
Brazil’s crushing 7-1 Fifa World Cup semi-final defeat to Germany broke records on-and-off the pitch on Tuesday evening, with previous twitter records of activity for a sporting event crushed by a deluge of online chatter.
In all 35.6 million tweets were sent during the match on Tuesday that saw the Germans thrash Brazil 7-1 – the host nation’s worst loss in its 100-year footballing history, as well as the biggest ever winning margin for a semi-final of the competition.
The previous record-mark on twitter was set at the Super Bowl in February, which saw nearly 25 million comments sent via the social media platform.
Facebook, meanwhile, saw more than 200 million posts, shares, comments and likes during the match, involving some 66 million people – also a record.
On both platforms, the fifth German goal by Sami Khedira just 29 minutes into the match sparked the most comments and reactions, generating more than 580,000 tweets in the space of a minute.
Up until Tuesday, the game between the hosts Brazil and Chile that went to extra time witnessed the previous high of the World Cup so far, which saw the pre-tournament favourites scrape through in a penalty shoot-out, with 16.3 million tweets.
