World Cup the most popular event in Facebook history

For the first time, an event tops one billion interactions, including posts, comments and likes

Every four years I have to brace myself for the World Cup, and the onslaught of Facebook posts from all of those "fans" who, honestly, probably never watch a single match at any other point. It's not that I don't enjoy following the World Cup, and I actually do like that people get into it; I'm just amused by the sudden interest by people who you know will stop caring once the U.S. is eliminated.

Of course, that doesn't apply to the rest of the world. For everyone else, who always care about the game, the World Cup has become the most popular sporting event on the planet. So popular, in fact, that it has now broken a couple of pretty big milestones on Facebook.

Between June 12th and June 29th, The World Cup accounted for over one billion Facebook interactions, the first time that has ever happened, the company revealed on Monday. An interaction is either a post, a comment or a like.

Those interactions have come from a total of 220 million users, or around 19% of Facebook's 1.2 billion users. 

"Facebook generally sees a large amount of conversation around sporting events, but the World Cup has proven to be a unique moment. Facebook’s data editors have never measured an event — sports or otherwise — that has topped a billion interactions," the company wrote.

In the first week of the tournament alone, the World Cup generated 459 million interactions, from 141 million people, which is more than the number of people who talked about this year’s Super Bowl, Oscars and Sochi Games, combined. 

This weekend's knockout game, in which Brazil defeated Chili on Saturday, generated 75 million interactions alone, from 31 million people. 

This is not the first record that this year's World Cup has broken. The most popular match so far was the first game in the tournament, Brazil's 3-1 win over Croatia. That game saw a total of 58 million posts, making it the most popular single event in Facebook history.

In addition, the company has also released some stats regarding some of the players, revealing that, ff the 20 most-liked comments by a World Cup athlete, 12 of them are from Brazilian players Neymar and David Luiz.

And, finally, eleven player posts have generated more than one million likes, including seven from Neymar, three from Leo Messi and one from Cristiano Ronaldo.

We've got around two weeks left of this thing to go, with the final scheduled for July 13th. At this rate, and with the tournament only heating up, the World Cup could generate at least another billion interactions.  

In other news, Ann Coulter's head just exploded.

(Image source: smh.com)