Never before has it been so easy to locate, share and discuss our favourite moments from an event such as the recently finished 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The reason for this, of course, is the amazing power of current social media as a tool for doing this – most notably in the form of viral videos, Youtube, Digg recommendations, Facebook ‘Likes’, blog pingbacks and so on (the list could go on for a few paragraphs no doubt).
So, with this in mind I decided that it would be nice to present some of the finest moments of World Cup 2010 which, in previous years, would probably have been lost without the aid of today’s social media. I guess this is somewhat of a World Cup withdrawal remedy mixed in with a celebration of how social media has changed our experiences of such events (and facilitated just one more ‘hit’ for world cup fans with a sudden gaping hole in their schedules).
The best place to start is yesterday’s excellent post over at Social Times, which offers a lively top 10 videos from the tournament. You have some real gems in there, ranging from wonder goals, to the more weird and wonderful moments such as Maradona insisting he’s not gay after misinterpreting a press conference question…
In addition to these great moments, I’ll add a few highlights of my own. First of all, two clips of some of the most bizarre training exercises I’ve ever seen, courtesy of Argentina and North Korea.
Very curious indeed – maybe England could learn a thing or two from this. ‘Thinking outside the box’ seems more than an understatement. Anyway, swiftly on to trick of the tournament – which didn’t sadly happen during a match but came in a training session, courtesy of Spain’s Juan Mata.
Finally, something to remember the Vuvuzela by with this enthusiastic Algerian supporter.
As the sheer volume of media out there continues to expand at a frightening rate (and not just relating to the World Cup of course), it’s a testament to the sophistication of indexing tools out there (search, ‘likes’, Digg etc) that we continue to be able to find gems such as those above in minutes, rather than having to trawl through endless TV media archives (which we wouldn’t have access to anyway) for days just to find something worth sharing. Basically, the World Cup (like so much else) is a lot better with Social Media. I for one can’t wait for the next one :)
Dejan Levi