The real winner of the #WorldCup2014 has been Twitter, and it isn’t even over yet. Last night in the semi-final, Germany’s (#GER) cataclysmic game against host nation Brazil (#BRA) which ended in an unprecedented 7-1 score line caused a record number of global tweets – 35.6 million to be exact – which knocked Miley Cyrus’ infamous foam finger off the top spot for tweets per minute (360,000 tweets per minute for Miley and 580,000 for Germany’s 5th goal).  See below for clever video showing geotagging below…

It was a game of two halves – well actually it was pretty much over by third goal…oh and then the fourth. The high scoring coming in such a high frequency clearly surprised the whole world. And what does the audience do? During a live football match? Tweet it. Oh yes, we want to share! We want to 1) share the shock/excitement/sadness 2) share a clever/witty/fact-filled comment and 3) tell a joke – as Russell Brand tweeted ””Can we have one goal please?” “Nein.”‘

Twitter has led a comprehensive World Cup 2014 social media campaign – from six months ago they were owning their field, (or their football pitch) by encouraging businesses to take advantage of the World Cup and sending out marketing communications to involve everyone. Holding Webinar events to encourage the best ways to increase your traffic and engagement during that time. They created timeline pages for each match and advertised each game at the side of your timeline. Every game had a hashtag #BRAvsGER. Each team had a hashtag. Each hashtag converted into a flag symbol – hashflags geddit? Genius. Where were Facebook while this was happening? Probs messing with everyone’s emotional timelines so they were less likely to see it. Could it ever work in Google+ when only half the world seems to understand it?

Twitter deserve this spike in interest, bringing together a worldwide live event and then that little bit of luck that something truly amazing happened, as a 7-1 trouncing in a World Cup semi-final hasn’t been seen ever before. Twitter have marked their territory on the sporting world; a place for a live, continually updated timeline of fun, facts and commentary from across the globe, bringing the good, the bad and the ugly. The match has been a key milestone in Twitter’s history, and in some ways Twitter has been key to the World Cup coverage. The images, adding insult to injury were added to timelines faster than you could say GOALLLLL. We’re creating our own news, reporting live from the stadium, the living room and the bar, how very modern.