Google & Twitter make special tribute to the 2014 FIFA World Cup

It’s here. The 20th FIFA World Cup is here! The 2014 tournament in Brazil is just hours away from kick-off and all football enthusiasts world-wide are getting into the mood. It’s been a 4 year wait, but it’s now a month or so of absolute anticipation, anxiety, joy, happiness, frustration, disappointment…you name it.

To mark the 2014 FIFA World Cup, both Google and Twitter have taken steps (as the former usually does) to pay tribute to the spectacle.

Google’s Doodle today had a play button above it, with Google written in a rather different font. Clicking on it created a nice little animation with a ball rolling in front of the letters and opening up  a scenery of sun, sand and Christ the Redeemer. The letters of Google also turn into jumping/celebrating fans. Nothing too fancy, but a nice little touch.

Twitter’s tribute wasn’t as spectacular but good work nevertheless. We already reported how Twitter had introduced ‘hashflags’ for the duration of the tournament. Users now woke up to a special message on top of their timelines when logged in. This allows users to select their favourite team for the tournament, and then has the usual Twitter stuff we’d see when creating a new account – profile picture, cover photo, make connections, send out a tweet etc, but with a World Cup touch.

Twitter’s log in page also had a face-lift, with the background shifting between images of a few participating nations and the cities of Brazil. It’s important that websites & social media platforms take special note of big events as this and make specific alterations & tributes, so kudos to Google & Twitter on that. Always expected the former to come up with something, but well done from the latter as well (the hashflags especially).