Exclusive: Facebook Scores Record 1 Billion Interactions For World Cup

[Ron Burgundy]

By Esteban Israel SAO PAULO (Reuters) - With 1 billion posts, likes and comments in just the first half of the World Cup, the soccer tournament is already the most talked-about event in Facebook Inc's decade-long history, data obtained by Reuters showed. The soccer conversation measured between June 12 and June 29 involved 220 million people and 1 billion interactions, the Facebook data showed. "People are having conversations on Facebook about what they watch in a really unprecedented scale," Nick Grudin, the company’s director of partnerships, told Reuters. "In addition to sharing and connecting with friends, people are engaging in real time with the media and the public voices they care about most." Facebook is the latest social media company to capitalize on TV-related traffic around big events like the World Cup, a trend started years ago by the microblog website Twitter Inc. People use Facebook to comment about things they watch live, an interaction that could turn into a source of ad revenue for the company.

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