Germany, England, Brazil, Italy: Generating the Most Online Buzz About the World Cup

According to Internet users who are sharing thoughts about the World Cup online, teams from Germany, England, Brazil and Italy are generating the most online buzz and fans are talking about Germany, Brazil, the United States and Italty with the most passion.

While the World Cup games play out on the international stage from Germany, the BlogPulse team has been capturing online discussion about the World Cup to provide added perspective and insights about the soccer phenomenon.

According to an analysis of 44,000 English-language online messages (48% from boards, 45% from blogs, 7% from Usenet) analyzed from May 1-June 16:

Leaders by Group: Group B (England, Trinidad and Tobago, England, Sweden and Paraguay) is generating the most buzz (39%), followed by Group A (Germany, Poland, Ecuador, Costa Rica) at 34%; and Group F (Brazil, Australia, Japan, Croatia) at 29%. Next in descending order: Groups E, C, G, D and H. These numbers were analyzed before last weekend's matches. The gender breakdown of the pool: 62% male, 10% female; 20% gender cannot be determined.

Leaders by country: Based on the sheer volume of buzz, World Cup teams from Germany, England, Brazil and Italy are generating the most discussion.

Most passionate posters: Countries that are creating the most emotional online discussions, as gauged by negative-positive sentiments discovered in postings, are England (50% of posts indicate negative/positive emotion), Brazil (46%), the United States (33%), Italy (32%) and the Netherlands (30%).

The most popular online news sources for World Cup news, as cited in blogs, are Handelsblatt.com, the BBC News Web site and Sports Illustrated.

And while it stil hasn't reached the peak of online saturation as the 2006 Super Bowl (2.5% of all blog posts on the day of the big game), buzz about the World Cup spiked at 2.25% of all blog posts on June 9, opening weekend. Look for it to creep back upwards again as the July 9 championship game approaches. Who will the last two teams be?