If Europeans have all rights to mock Americans for their soccer skills and history, the World Cup has brought at least one thing to the USA but a gold plated trophy is not that thing. Nor are Vuvuzelas.

So what’s it?

Twitter launched promoted tweets just before the start of the USA- Ghana knock out game today.

For a long time people have wondered what Twitter’s business model was and promoted tweets, announced several months ago already now have made their appearance.

During the biggest sports event in the world, which broke the previous Tweets/second record, before the nation with the biggest number of Twitter users plays a knock-out game.

Twitter’s first partner: one of the biggest brands in the world, Nike and also sponsor of the national soccer team of the USA.

The promoted tweet ranks on top of the search for the trending tag #USA. Even when new results come in, the sponsored tweet stays on top of the search results. read more

Twitter set a per tweet record last week during the NBA Finals, however that record didn’t last long with the World Cup helping Twitter users send 3,282 tweets per second during a nail biting Japan victory versus Denmark.

The new tweet total, officially reported by Twitter, edged out the 3,085 tweets per second sent during the Los Angeles Lakers win over the Boston Celtics in this years final NBA game.

Compared to Twitter’s average of 750 tweets per second, it’s a huge 450% (approximate) jump in numbers, explaining why the Twitter whale keeps popping up right when I actually need to send messages. read more

Google loves to have fun on April Fool’s day and during various special celebrations, apparently the World Cup is no exception. The company placed a Vuvuzela button on their YouTube videos and it actually works!

Just click on the red soccer ball icon located below the video and the entire video, including it’s own sounds will be drowned out by the delightful (umm…or not) sound of the Vuvuzela. read more