World Cup sparks Twitter frenzy

A staggering 672 million tweets were sent about the World Cup during the 32-day tournament - more than two million every day.

Twitter released the figures just hours before the Germany's victorious team were due to arrive in Berlin, a homecoming that is sure to have the country's football fans taking to social media to share their celebrations.

The most-tweeted about event during the entire tournament was perhaps its most jaw-dropping - the 7-1 demolition of hosts Brazil by Germany in the first semi-final.

That astonishing result created a Twitter frenzy, with more than 35.6 million tweets about the match, a new Twitter record for a single event. The final itself garnered 32.1 million tweets.

The top five most-tweeted moments of the World Cup were all about Germany, with three coming during the win over Brazil.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the moment that had Twitter users tweeting most was when Germany finally beat Argentina in the final, with 618,725 tweets coming every minute.

Brazil's golden boy Neymar, injured in his country's quarter-final win over Colombia, was the most mentioned player of the tournament, followed by Argentina's maestro Messi and, thanks to the now infamous biting incident, Uruguay's Luis Suarez in third.

Twitter said in a blog about the World Cup: "While this is the highest number we've announced related to an event, it's hard to compare the 32-day, 64-match World Cup to, for example, the single-game Super Bowl, the one-night Oscars, or the 16-day Olympics.

"Every minute of every day it seemed fans across the globe were discussing the drama of the tournament, though we saw the conversation really take off during each live match. When a thrilling moment occurred on the pitch, the world came to Twitter to talk about it."