Tweeters go crazy about FIFA World Cup

BANGALORE, INDIA: The Football World Cup fever is catching up faster than anything at the moment. From celebrities to common man, from Twiterattis to Facebook lovers, everyone is speaking the language of football.

Though die-hard Football fan John Abraham has chosen to experience and share the FIFA offline, many other celebrities are already tweeting about it. To celebrate the occasion Twitter has even launched a special site.

Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) has posted a series of tweets. “ I am emotional with FIFA, My mom& me used to stay up & watch all night...cos v had got ourselves a tv & only soccer post Doordarshan.” wish my mom was here, would have taken her with me. Our favorites r Argentina, Brazil, Germany & Spain...England will do well too I think.”

Gulpanag (@gulpanag tweets, “FIFA world cup! And we too are part of the frenzy- as spectators. Wonder when India will make it there as a team.”

However, there are many celebrities who are unaffected by maddening FIFA fever. A few examples are: Amitabh Bachchan - @SrBachchan, Aamir Khan - @Aamir_Khan, Akshay Kumar - @akshaykumar, Abhishek Bachchan - @juniorbachchan, Anupam Kher - @AnupamPkher, Arjun Rampal - @rampalarjun, Arshad Warsi - @arshadwarsi201, - A R Rahman @arrahman, Sanjay Dutt - @duttsanjay, Salman Khan@ - BeingSalmanKhan, Sushmita Sen @thesushmitasen. Cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar - @sachin_rt is also seems to be silent.

Talking about the scenario worldwide, Twitter is said to have diagnosed with high FIFA fever. The participants includes even FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who seems to be getting 400,000 fans, soon. #FIFA is the most trending topic at present and is receiving around 100 tweets every minute.

FIFAWorldCupTM a twitter account that started 9 MAY, 2009, has got more than 660,000 followers talking about FIFA calendars, schedules, teams players.

A few technology players, like VEVO, plan to feature integrated Twitter chat, for the users to chat while watching the game, by adding the hashtag #VEVOworldcup to their related tweets.

John Cook, who is the co-founder and executive editor of TechFlash, very well summed the twitter fever in his blog.

“During the last World Cup in 2006, Twitter was something that most people associated with birds. (According to Wikipedia, the first publicly-available version of Twitter went live in July 2006 around the same time that Italy was capturing the World Cup crown in Germany),” he wrote.

“Twitter today represents an interesting dilemma for World Cup soccer fans. While the instantaneous chatter offers a fantastic way to stay abreast of what's happening on the pitch, there's the problem of avoiding scores,” he observed.