A beautiful game for online World Cup fans
Internet games, social media spice up tourney
- Published: 23/06/2010 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Database
The Fifa World Cup is every football fan's dream, and this year followers can interact with the event by playing online games and using social media.
Google Maps can help fans find venues near them which are broadcasting World Cup matches.
Broadcaster RS is also co-operating with Google to use location-based marketing to help football fans locate each other so that they can gather to cheer on their favourite teams.
Visa , a Fifa partner and the preferred card of the 2010 World Cup, has also launched its Visa Match Planner, a social media application allowing users to create customisable, dynamic match schedules to share with friends via social networking channels such as Facebook.
The planner is available in four languages and can be customised for each of the 32 participating countries.
In addition to building a customised match-viewing schedule, the application also lets users organise parties, chat with friends, track scores and standings, and obtain exclusive offers from merchants on fifa.com.
Somboon Krobteeranon, Thailand country manager at Visa, said social media provides a unique platform to help football fans express their views and connect with friends around the world.
"Through dynamic social media extensions of the Go Fans campaign, Visa is able to strengthen our connection to the World Cup and enhance every fan's experience with engaging content," he said.
Meanwhile, Adidas has launched http://www.adidasnewsstream.com for football fans to download news updates, high quality photos, video clips and interviews with football players, referees, or even the African artist who painted the portraits of 32 players from the 32 competing nations.
The Associated Press recently offered its free app, AP 2010 World Cup Coverage, for download from iTunes and Ovi by Nokia, and other app stores.
The application provides users with access to the latest player and team news, match previews, post-match analysis, stadium and regional information, photos and exclusive video from the resources of the AP news agency. It is currently supported on the Nokia Series S60 and iPhone.
It will be supported on the Nokia S40, 5th an 6th editions, and N900 Maemo device; Sony Ericsson S60 devices; Android platform supporting Flash Lite 3.1 in the browser; Android platform supporting Flash Player 10.1 (Droid/Milestone and Nexus One); BlackBerry in the browser; AIR Desktop and a Wap site.
Research In Motion's South Africa on BlackBerry application, is available from BlackBerry App World. Users can download the app for free and stay up to date on the soccer tournament, as it allows international fans access to the stats and scores they crave from their BlackBerry smart phones.
There are many other free and paid-for mobile applications related to South Africa 2010 available via iPhones and handsets running the Android platform.
Isra Taulananda, general manager of True Digital Plus, the exclusive publisher of Fifa Online 2 in Thailand said,the company has localised EA Sports Fifa Online 2 extension mode - 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa - to allow Thai football fans to play this free sports game through their PC.
Players can log in to play through http://www.gg.in.th or http://www.fol2.in.th and play with 199 teams, including Thailand, which feature character designs of real footballers.
It is free to play the basic game but the company earns money buy selling items such as team strips, shoes, first aid kits for injured players, and so on.
Currently, there are 400,000 active users playing the extended version of the games, which accounts for 20 percent of Fifa Online's overall user base of 2 million.
Meanwhile, Artyt Lerdrakmongkol, RS Online Business Vice President, said holding the exclusive World Cup broadcast rights in Thailand has attracted Google to choose RS as its partner to launch a new service called The Best Place to Watch the Match.
The service helps football fans to find the nearest place to them which is showing a particular match, from a database of 5,000 restaurants and entertainment venues with RS broadcast rights.
This is a global campaign from Google, while RS is its local partner to provide the information and bring this as a valued-added service for location-based marketing .
To access this campaign, users can type "world cup" into the search field at google.co.th or go directly to http://www.google.co.th/worldcup/maps via their PC or mobile phone.
About the author
- Writer: Suchit Leesa-nguansuk
- Position: Reporter
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