The World Cup 2010 is exciting for a number of reasons, firstly we all love a good game of footie and pretending that England is in with a chance, secondly because of the wags, they have all been banned this year, ha and lastly because it will unite the world of social media with the masses.

If you think back to the last World Cup 2006 (I know it wasn’t that long ago but many of us spent it in a drunken stupor) the concept of social media was pretty unformed.

In fact most of the things we use daily now, didn’t even exist. We had YouTube but it wasn’t used nearly as much as it is today. Facebook existed but wasn’t open to the general public until that September, and Twitter, well that was just an apple in it’s mother’s (or Jack Dorsey’s) eye.

So, basically it just didn’t really exist. There was no updating your status every time someone scored a goal, no tweet about who played well and definitely no revealing the squad before it was officially announced. It’s not like today where 50 million tweets are sent daily and Facebook boasts more than 400 million active users.

A few days ago the Twittersphere was going crazy. The Football Association’s website crashed due to the number of desperate fans trying to find out the squad. So where did they turn? Twitter to speculate and spy.

The Daily Express’s Matt Law was one of the first to break the news of Walcott’s omission “Walcott out of England World Cup squad,” he tweeted. “Gutted for him.” Naughty naughty, this was before the FA or Fabio Capello had made an official statement. It wasn’t long until other members of the media tweeted about who was in and who was out.

Not a good start for the FA but it clearly shows the way that football commentary for this year is going to go.

CNN recently poitned out that the World Cup is the biggest thing to ever hit Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Every website these days has links to their social media pages, so whenever the World Cup is written about this year, it will lead to major traffic and huge usage of the sites.

The head of new media for FIFA told CNN “Football is the world’s biggest sport, so the world will practically stop for the month of the World Cup. There will be so much more media consumed, used and published in 2010 than in 2006. Social media can bring fans closer together and give fans more opportunity to communicate with each other,”

Robin Sloan, who works for Twitter on media partnership confirmed this saying: “Our notion is that [the World Cup] will eclipse everything we have seen so far [on Twitter] including the U.S. election, the Oscars or the Super Bowl, simply because it is so international.”

And lets not forget it’s won’t only be the fans using social media during the World Cup. It is thought that advertisers will use it for marketing rather than more traditional methods.

Callum MacDougal, the director of global marketing partnerships for Sony Ericsson, the official handset makers of the 2010 finals tells Reuters.com: “We have made the conscious decision to steer away from the traditional branding route… Instead we are going straight to online fan communities through popular social networking channels.”

And if you think about it, why wouldn’t they use it? It’s much cheaper than more traditional advertising, it’s current, it gets the public involved and it is proven to work.

So, those of you who love football and love social media this is a match made in heaven. If you aren’t a big user of social media this may be the time to get involved, especially if you like football because it is bound to be the best way to keep up to date with what is going on and to have your say.
It’s officially the summer of social media and South Africa. Come on England!

There have been a lot of faith-restoring stories coming out of the social media world of late. Last week I wrote about the Facebook campaign that has helped save the life of young British student Philip Pain who fell seven-stories in Mexico and was in desperate need of blood. This week I want to acknowledge the huge effort made by social networking pages to help the people of Haiti.

Only minutes after the devastating earthquake floored the tiny Caribbean nation last Tuesday, the online world was mobilised and ready to help in any way it could.

One of the organisations leading the way was The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) who have now raised over £25 million after their appeal was announced on Twitter on last Wednesday.

The DEC has utilised Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube over the past week and their Chief Executive, Brendan Gormley, has publicly praised the significant role these social media sites have had in their campaign.

Mr. Gormley said, “Social networking has proven itself as a valuable addition to the fundraising machine. I’m thrilled that we have been able to quickly communicate and engage the UK public, who have in turn responded with tremendous generosity to help the people of Haiti who so urgently need our help.

“Their donations mean our member agencies can continue to source and deliver the emergency supplies needed like safe water, shelter, medicine and food. We hope people will continue to give their support so that more emergency aid can be added to what will be a massive humanitarian effort.”

DEC reported on Facebook that Flickr has been used to host images from the DEC’s member agencies, with 34,000 views of the DEC account on Friday, while a video of the DEC broadcast appeal has attracted nearly 4,000 views on YouTube.

Not only has social media been an outstanding tool to stimulate aid and increase donations, it has also played a vital role in spreading news and remarkably, locating victims.

“This is the first example we’ve seen where that sense of global community has been expressed in action, for example using social media technology to get the story out faster, to locate victims, and to give instantaneous donations,” said James Norrie, a media professor at RTS’s School of IT Management. “That’s an amazing use of a social media tool.”

The events in Haiti, while both shocking and saddening, have reinforced social media’s undoubted ability for social good.

I think Tom Brown, writing for The Burlington Free Press, captured it well when he wrote, “I’ve heard critics of social media say that users of communication tools such as Twitter and Facebook only want to talk to, and about, themselves and their friends. The earthquake in Haiti might help change the minds of some of those critics”.

“When people can respond that quickly and in such numbers to help their fellow man, then there certainly is hope”.

To make a donation to the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal visit www.dec.org.uk or call 0370 60 60 900, donate over the counter at any post office or high street bank, send a cheque made payable to ‘DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal’ to ‘PO Box 999, London, EC3A 3AA’ or text GIVE to 70077 to donate £5. £5 goes to DEC. You pay £5 plus your standard network SMS rate.

Google’s much-publicised efforts to turn YouTube into a profitable entity may be nearing an end with the company announcing that 1080p full resolution HD videos are on their way.

Earlier this year Credit Suisse analyst, Spencer Wang said that he believed Google was on course to lose $470.6 million this year mainly because of YouTube’s inability to generate revenue from advertising.

Surely YouTube’s irresistable global presence is enough to make Google an absurd amount of cash via advertisements? Apparently not.

According to the advertising experts, it is YouTube’s video quality that is holding it back in the advertising world.

At a recent press conference that hosted some of the leading minds in advertising, CEO of marketing giant GroupM Interaction, Rob Norman, put it bluntly when he described the technical quality of YouTube, and sites like it, as “complete crap”.

Media agency executive Robert Davis of OgilvyInteractive viewed it similarly, saying, “If somebody put that on TV looking that way, they’d be fired…Why is that acceptable online?”

Last week YouTube blogged the news that should change all that.

“We’re excited to say that support for watching 1080p HD videos in full resolution is on its way. Starting next week, YouTube’s HD mode will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the resolution of the original source, up from our maximum output of 720p today.

As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content. For viewers with big monitors and a fast computer, try switching to 1080p to get the most out of the fullscreen experience.”

While YouTube’s announcement focus’s on the benefits for its users, there is no doubt they will be licking their lips at what the change will mean for them.

Advertisers have applauded YouTube’s latest move. After hearing the announcement, Mr Davis told Beet TV that “this is very good news for the industry”.

“As the visual experience becomes more satisfying, the greater the interactive potential becomes for brands ready to play in the content space. For years, we have been forced to build interactive experience around severely limited, technologically inferior video. Not any more.”

So YouTube has given advertisers what they’ve asked for. Now, can they turn this phenomenon into the cash cow it probably deserves to be?

Check out one of YouTube’s full HD videos below

Or click through and watch the Official Toy Story 3 Teaser Trailer in HD