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Twitter Unveils Fancy World Cup Page with Groan-Inducing 'Hashflags'

by Amar Toor on June 11, 2010 at 01:15 PM

Twitter World Cup page
While most of us have been spending our evenings watching Glen "Big Baby" Davis slobber all over the NBA Finals, the rest of mankind, for whatever reason, is caught up in something called the 'World Cup.' From what we've heard, it's some sort of grandiose international event where people from historically war-torn nations find new excuses to burn the cars of their former colonizers, drunk hooligans develop groundbreaking racial slurs and countless sports anchors find new and inventive ways to use the word "globalization." It's a lot like the Olympics -- only more boring, because we never win. [Ed. Note: We call BS on you, Amar. You live in France, and you clearly love soccer.]

The good people at Twitter, though, are apparently so stricken with football soccer fever, they've decided to launch a new page entirely devoted to the "World's Most Boring Game." As Wired reports, the new platform features news and tweets from each of the 32 nations contending for the Cup, as well as a "What's Happening" bar that provides real-time updates of matches in progress. The site also launched a special World Cup Suggested Accounts List and a Top Tweets account that collects tweets from some 150 players, journalists and soccer organizations. Instead of hashtags, users can now mark their tweets with "hashflags," meaning if you make a comment about Brazil's, um, formation (?), and if you follow it with a '#bra' tag, a little Brazilian flag will show up next to your tweet.

As co-founder Biz Stone explained in a statement, Twitter's "rapid international growth" was a major reason for the initiative (60-percent of the site's membership hail from places not called America). In 2006, during the last World Cup, the site was in its infancy. Now, though, the network finds itself in the center of what Stone calls a "global phenomenon, as people everywhere seek to discover what's happening with their favorite team, their favorite players, and breaking news." Forgive our cultural ignorance, though, if we still can't muster up enough excitement to actually care about soccer. [Ed. Note: Another BS call. Don't forget U.S.A. vs. U.K. on Saturday!] [From: Twitter, via: Wired and Engadget]

Tags: football, hashflag, hashflags, news, Soccer, socialnetworking, south africa, SouthAfrica, sports, top, twitter, web, world cup 2010, WorldCup, WorldCup2010, WorldCupSouthAfrica

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