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For continuous World Cup coverage, check out Mashable’s 2010 World Cup Hub, which will be updated throughout the games.

It’s another round of World Cup Twitter trends, and we’re seeing some interesting stats on how fans are tweeting about their favorite teams, players, and arch rivals.

Similarly to last week’s stats, all of the national teams trended at some point in the past seven days, and 74 players hit Twitter’s top 10. And while some coaches and managers were trending last week, this is the first time that several referees were singled out, mostly with ire from fans over unfavorable calls.

We’ve also seen more Twitter action around certain World Cup groups where the matches have been more competitive. And interestingly, some of the most-tweeted teams are not the best ones. Often, they’re teams that have been eliminated from competition, followed by waves of disappointed tweets from heartbroken fans.

Below is the breakdown of the most-tweeted teams and players this week, graciously compiled by Liz Pullen of What The Trend.

Remember, these rankings are not about team and player abilities, but reflect an aggregation of hotly discussed topics related to them.

Most-Tweeted World Cup Teams

Rank	National Team	Points
1	Portugal	2334
2	Mexico	1991
3	Netherlands	1605
4	USA	1368
5	Italy	1236
6	Brazil	984
7	Ivory Coast	888
8	Germany	810
9	France	792
10	South Africa	741

Most-Tweeted World Cup Players

Rank	Player	Team	Points
1	Guillermo Franco	Mexico	1875
2	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal	1740
3	Landon Donovan	USA	978
4	Nicolas Anelka	France	591
5	Luis Fabiano	Brazil	576
6	Harry Kewell	Australia	213
7	Martin Palermo	Argentina	207
8	Wesley Sneijder	Netherlands	180
9	Raul Meireles	Portugal	174
10	Fernando Torres	Spain	168

Need more social media World Cup coverage? Of course you do! Head on over to Mashable’s World Cup headquarters, where you’ll find real-time data on match scores, social mentions, and links to all our previous news and features.

More World Cup resources from Mashable:

- World Cup 2010: Mashable’s Complete Coverage
- The World Cup’s Social Media Evolution
- 5 Free Must-Have World Cup Android Apps
- HOW TO: Follow the 2010 World Cup on Twitter
- Top 6 Free World Cup iPhone Apps

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Jezperklauzen

Reviews: Australia, Facebook, Mashable, Twitter, World Cup, iStockphoto

More About: data, social media, sports, trends, twitter, twitter trends, world cup, world cup 2010, world cup twitter trends

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Tags: data, trends, Twitter Lists, twitter trends, world cup, world cup 2010, world cup twitter trends

World Cup and Obama Top iPhone 4 Buzz Pre-Launch [STATS]

June 24, 2010 in Making it Count, News, Sports, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, mashable, twitter by Jolie O'Dell View Comments

Over here at Mashable HQ, we’re up to our eyeballs in iPhone 4 news. But the Android fans among us are happy to report that while gadget geeks and technophiles might be exploding with delight over the newest shiny toy from Apple, the iPhone is barely tipping the scales in terms of overall online mentions.

Normal people on the Internet would still rather talk about the World Cup or President Obama, it seems.

According to data we’ve just received from social sharing service AddThis, the USA soccer win and Obama’s decision to accept the resignation of one of his top generals are still much more newsworthy than a phone of any kind. AddThis integrates data from almost 300 services around the web, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Digg and a plethora of blogging platforms.

Take a look at these graphs, which show a significantly higher number of shares for those two topics over the iPhone 4. The first image shows the number of shares through June 23, and the second shows social media activity over a period from June 11 to June 23.

Clearly, the iPhone 4 is just one fish in the greater sea of online content, and a rather small one at that.

What have you been interested in more over the past couple of weeks: The World Cup games, President Obama or the new iPhone?

Reviews: AddThis, Digg, Facebook, Google Reader, Internet, Twitter, World Cup

More About: apple, iphone, iphone 4, obama, trend, twitter, world cup

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Tags: Gadgets, iphone, iphone 4, obama, political, trend, world cup

The Evolution of the World Cup Ball – Interactive – NYTimes.com

June 24, 2010 in Making it Count, Sports, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, design by Delicious hotlist View Comments

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Tags: ball, flash, football, history, soccer, sport, visualization, worldcup

Enjoy a Stream of Short-Form Videos with New Site and iPad App

June 24, 2010 in Film, Making it Count, Music, Sports, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, facebook, mashable, pop culture, video by Brenna Ehrlich View Comments

Mashable’s Spark of Genius series highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, see details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: ShortForm.TV [Warning: Videos are set to autoplay]

Quick Pitch: Snack on an endless stream of short-form video.

Genius Idea: With more than 24 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube alone, it can be hard to find something to watch when you’re after a quick hit of humor or whimsy. That’s where Shortform.TV comes in.

Shortform.tv is a website and iPad, iPhone and iPod touch app [iTunes link] that launched today. It allows viewers to surf through a variety of channels housing a selection of short videos, which have been sorted and collected by both real-live human curators and aggregation software. Said software aggregates videos from sources such as Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo, and it categorizes videos based on criteria defined by the curators.

The playlist generator then organizes the videos based on trending data and user feedback — you can nix vids by clicking on the “thumbs-down” button next to the player, and you can save videos to “My Channel” by clicking “thumbs-up.”

To formulate your channel, you’ll have to sign in to the site via Facebook Connect. After doing so, you can share videos with your friends by posting them to your Facebook profile, and you can add videos you’ve viewed on Facebook and YouTube to your channel on Shortform.tv. You can also choose to share your channel with other users and friends. As more and more users makes their way to the site, the founder says you will be able to compete to have your channel featured on the main page, which should be an incentive for hardcore viral-video fans to join.

Shortform.tv is a great little time-waster in the tradition of sites like Redux and yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah, but it’s exclusively for video content — which makes it perfect for anyone who enjoys watching or sharing the latest viral flick.

Right now, the site has around six categories — Facebook Hits, HaHa Funny, Super Cute, Totally Weird, Feel Good and So Hollywood — which seems a little sparse. We would love to see them add more specialized channels, i.e. music videos, parodies, commercials and the like. Still, this platform is meant to entertain, and it has achieved that goal.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, marcoscisetti

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EA Drops Prices on iPhone Games Including Madden, FIFA and SimCity to $1

June 22, 2010 in Making it Count, Mobile 2.0, News, Sports, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, mashable by Samuel Axon View Comments

Game-maker Electronic Arts (EA) is selling a big chunk of its iPhone game library for just $0.99 per game for the next 48 hours — a steep discount for many of its titles which include Madden NFL 2010, FIFA 10 and SimCity.

Not all of EA’s games are on sale, though. Sure, SimCity is $0.99, but The Sims 3 [iTunes link] is still a steep $6.99, and while FIFA 2010 is just $0.99, the more timely FIFA World Cup [iTunes link] hangs at $2.99 — though that’s not a bad price, either.

EA is one of the world’s biggest game publishers. Its EA Sports line of games is at the top of the heap, and franchises like The Sims, Mass Effect and Medal of Honor have at one time or another led in sales or influence. Increasingly, the company has extended those franchises to mobile devices like the iPhone.

The full list of games on sale includes: SimCity, Madden NFL 2010, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010, FIFA 10, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Undercover, Command & Conquer Red Alert, NBA Live, CLUE, Trivial Pursuit, CONNECT 4, Battleship, YAHTZEE Adventures, and The Game of Life: Classic Edition [iTunes links].