Neymar Picks Up 165K New Followers as Twitter Goes World Cup Crazy

Twitter users wondering how to boost their following now have a simple answer: score two goals for the host country on the opening night of the World Cup. It worked for Neymar.

Twitter has been compiling data from the World Cup, and Day 1 of the tournament saw 12.2 million tweets on the Brazil vs. Croatia curtain-raiser.

Neymar, who scored a brace in Brazil's 3-1 victory, saw his account @neymarjr gain more than 10 times its normal rate of followers, all while he was busy kicking a ball around in Sao Paulo.

"

Look what happened to @neymarjr’s followers after his #BrazilvsCroatia performance https://t.co/YybPLg6pzg pic.twitter.com/891lw3SfYT

— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) June 13, 2014"

A rolling infographic shows where in the world tweets were made as the game unfolded. The spike in comments at the time of the goals is quite something:

Twitter

Twitter

Twitter

Twitter

You can watch an animation of it in full here.

With citizens of more than 150 countries getting involved in the World Cup on Twitter, it's clear there's going to be almost as much to look at on your second screen as there is on the field of play.

[Twitter]