By Olly Howick
November 21 – The World Cup play-off billed as ‘Ronaldo v Ibrahimović’ didn’t disappoint with all six goals coming from the two players. Ronaldo came out the clear winner with four of the goals and a trip to Brazil for the finals. He was also a big winner in the social media battle off the pitch.
In terms of Twitter followers, Ronaldo is way ahead of Ibrahimović, with (at the time of writing) 22,808,485 and 212,017 followers respectively.
Given the number of people watching the two players, it was interesting to see there was also a vast difference in the number of mentions on Twitter. ‘Zlatan Ibrahimović’ was mentioned 61,932 times on Twitter yesterday, more than a fifth of his mentions in the last 30 days, but ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’ was mentioned 389,708 times yesterday alone, about 19% of his last 30 days’ mentions and almost 100,000 times more than ‘Zlatan Ibrahimović’ is mentioned in total in 30 day span.
These stats have to be put in perspective – Ibrahimović has tweeted just 31 times since joining Twitter, where as Ronaldo has tweeted 1,645 times.
It is clear that the Portugese star is a savvier and more creative user of social media and this translates into more followers and more people talking about you.
After the play off win for Portugal, it may be good news for Ronaldo and co. as they are off to the World Cup. And the stats show that the Twitterati were celebrating with him and his country last night too.
Who would bet against Twitter going crazy for CR7 next summer in Brazil? They might not win the World Cup but they would have to be favourites to top the Twitter rankings with such a networked star leading the team.
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