The FIFA World Cup in South Africa drove record tweet rates, including 3,283 tweets per second after Japan's goal against Denmark on 24 June, and repeated Twitter outages.
Related exhibits
- WebsiteVerified
Twitter
140 characters and the Fail Whale
Twitter turned four in 2010 and became the internet's newswire. Users sent about 50 million tweets a day in February and roughly 90 million a day by September, the Library of Congress agreed to...
- CultureVerified
Paul the Octopus
The psychic octopus who picked every World Cup result correctly
Paul, an octopus at a German aquarium, chose the winner of all seven of Germany's 2010 World Cup matches and the final by picking a mussel from a box, and became a global internet celebrity with...
- CultureSupported
The Fail Whale
Twitter's over-capacity page, seen constantly during the World Cup
Yiying Lu's illustration of a whale lifted by birds appeared whenever Twitter was over capacity, which in 2010 was often: during the World Cup, the Lost finale and the iPhone 4 launch. The Fail Whale...
- CultureSupported
Vuvuzela
The droning horn of the 2010 World Cup, and the internet's loudest joke
The vuvuzela, the plastic horn that droned through every 2010 World Cup broadcast from South Africa, became a meme within days: browser extensions added a vuvuzela to any site, YouTube got a vuvuzela...
