I’ve seen a couple of people have customized their Twitter accounts to show their support for their favorite FIFA World Cup team. Yeah! I want to show my support for Team USA. GO TEAM USA! How do I do that?
I’ll forgive you for supporting Team USA since it’s cool to support any World Cup team as long as you’re actually a supporter of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the biggest – and most exciting – sporting event in the world. Every four years. A long time to wait, for sure, but it’s here and the games are running from June 12 to July 13, when the historic final match will be played, crowning one nation the best in the world at soccer.
Me? I support Team England so we’re not quite on the same page but with any luck we’ll see a USA vs. England match up, which would be a great game. I’d likely cheer every goal even as I sport my England jersey. 🙂
Back to Twitter, though. The smart team at Twitter is very aware that World Cup and its associated hashtag #WorldCup are going to see a LOT of traffic in the next thirty days, so they actually have a nice banner that is showing up at the top of people’s Twitter home pages:
In case you aren’t seeing this on your Twitter page, I’ve dug up the link and made that image clickable. So click on it to get started picking your team and showing your support for the World Cup!
Still with me? Good. Okay. So, when you do click on that link, you’ll be presented with a page full of flags and asked to pick your favorite:
I suppose you could pick one of these, since at least four of those shown are on the short list as likely winners this year, but underdogs are more fun to root for, right? Oh yeah, you’re for Team USA, so just scroll down to pick the USA flag. Me, I’ll pick England.
For the next step you’ll have the option of choosing a new profile image that shows the world your team:
I kinda like the stylized soccer ball (since they can’t use the official game ball because they’d probably have to pay for rights from Adidas) so that’s what I choose, then click on “Continue” to proceed.
The next step is really cool: Twitter has grouped various World Cup twitter users based on team and country, making it super easy for you to bulk follow them:
I followed all 91 identified for Team England. Why not?
Now Twitter tries to trick you into letting them scan your entire Gmail address book (well, maybe not “trick” but really, why does this show up in the middle of the World Cup customization sequence?)
I opted not to do this, so “skip this step for now” got me to the last screen in the sequence:
Very cool stuff. And that’s all there is, other than watching tons of games on TV and yelling your heart out. Because the teams really can tell if their fans are supporting them, even if we’re thousands of miles away! 🙂
And… GO ENGLAND!
ps: If you don’t follow me on Twitter, I’m both @DaveTaylor and @FilmBuzz.