16 June 2010 - 8:49World Cup Shuts Down Twitter

For those who fall anywhere between the range of addicted, to avid user, to occasional dabbler to social media news semi-follower, you’ve probably noticed that since the start of the World Cup on Friday, Twitter has had some serious issues staying afloat. World Cup fever appears to be too much for Twitter to handle. Trending topics are momentarily down, too, even when Twitter is up and running.

The ‘Fail Whale’ has become an all too common occurrence over the past five days, and with the World Cup lasting another three and a half weeks, can Twitter find a way to upgrade their capacity to be able to control the flood of tweets coming their way?

The World Cup buzz has effectively silenced Twitter.

Sports headlines at the beginning of the tournament read that the coach of the Netherlands team banned his squad from using Twitter during the duration of the World Cup, due to an incident. One of his players, Eljero Elia, was caught on streaming video apparently saying racially insensitive remarks towards Moroccans [though he later claimed it was directed towards a friend, an inside joke between the two]. As punishment, the Netherlands national team joins the English and Spanish teams on the list of teams not actively Tweeting.

I, for one, can’t help but see the coaches’ point. Just because the rest of the world has decided over the last few years to completely disregard any notion of a private life, why should their locker room be exposed to the world?

While this is merely a microcosm of the big questions regarding social media, the non-existence of private life, and the pros and cons of news immediacy through all things internet:

• How do you think social media and World Cup will play out?
• Or rather, how should it be handled?