Social networks get 2010 spirit

Social networking services have stepped up their Fifa Soccer World Cup spirit, bringing fun innovations to their platforms.

Youtube yesterday unveiled its soccer ball icon, which allows viewers to add a vuvuzela soundtrack to the videos they watch. The proudly South African horn has caused controversy during the soccer spectacle this year, with players and coaches from around the world complaining they are too noisy.

However, Fifa would not have the vuvuzela banned from the stadiums, saying they are traditional to South African soccer, similar to the drums and band tunes used elsewhere in the world.

Several TV networks have taken the matter into their own hands and have started to filter the vuvuzela blasts from their broadcasts.

Sky Deutschland, in Germany, and Canal Plus, in France, have both begun filtering out the blaring noise. Both broadcasters aired a vuvuzela-free version of the SA vs Uruguay match.

Canal Plus used a special sound filter developed by Paris-based Audionamix, while Sky combined several different filters to get the right sound.

Youtube's vuvuzela button has created scorn everywhere except in SA, where locals have taken well to the noisy backing track. The video site's owner has made no comment about the new feature.

Ahead of the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup, few would have predicted how popular the Vuvezela horn would have become, let alone this popularity would transcend into the digital medium as well.

Mobile advertising platform company AdMob says international developers are raking in a fortune from SA's horn.

iPhone's Vuvezela 2010 application, which has been downloaded 3.5 million times to date, has been rated as the number one free app all over the world, earning its developers thousands of dollars a week in advertising revenue.

With the whistle set to blow on the World Cup Final on 11 July, viewers still far from sure who will be lifting the trophy, but there's no doubt that SA's vuvuzela has won the affection of football fans both in the real and virtual world.

Twitter was one of the first social networks to get in on the action, specifically after World Cup-related tweets started to crash the site.

During the opening match between Mexico and Bafana Bafana, twitter was handling 2 704 tweets per second.

Twitter has been undergoing upgrades to cope with the number of tweets coming from the World Cup. It has now also added a feature that is based on # tags. Each tag that represents a country appears with the flag of that country, and each time the #worldcup tag appears, it comes with a mini soccer ball.

These tags link to the site it created specifically for real-time Soccer World Cup tweets, to help it cope with the capacity.