As the world descended into World Cup mania, Facebook decided to sift through its 1 billion-plus tournament related posts to run a little (completely emotion manipulation-free) study. Starting at the beginning of the games, the social network decided to track what was more popular: “soccer,” “football,” futbal” … you get the general idea.
And the most prevalent translation, based on Facebook comments and posts, is going to make some people very unhappy:
- Soccer
- Football
- Fútbol
- Futebol
- Futbol
That might numb the burn of the USA vs. Belgium game.
Facebook also looked at the use of the word “goal” on the site. More specifically, it looked at which countries used the most letters to express its enthusiasm. It turns out that Venezuelans are the most Gooooool exuberant, using an average of 21 characters to spell it out. Here are the top five elongated spellers:
- Venezuela (21.2 characters)
- Gabon (18.4)
- Tunisia (13.4)
- Mexico (12.8)
- Montenegro (12.8)
And just in case you needed some visualizations:
