Why Twitter Has Been Down Since the Beginning of the World Cup.

If you’re on Twitter then you’ve probably been seeing more of the Fail Whale than your family lately, I think it’s World Cup-related, why? Let me tell you:

1. On the opening day there were too many tweets from excited football fans all over the world. Twitter failed.

2. During the opening match Al-Jazeera Sport viewers suffered from the very poor signal of the channel because someone (God knows who) tried to sabotage their authorized transmission of the FIFA World Cup and there were too many tweets from people either complaining or predicting who did it, everyone had his/her own theory. Twitter failed.

3. The second match was France vs. Uruguay. The French have really, really long words with unnecessary extra letters, this called for more tweets since the characters are limited to 140, too many French tweets. Twitter failed.

4. Next match: South Korea vs. Greece. I’ll list the names of the Greek team from FIFA.com:

Konstantinos CHALKIAS

Giourkas SEITARIDIS

Christos PATSATZOGLOU

Nikos SPIROPOULOS

Vangelis MORAS

Alexandros TZIOLIS

Georgios SAMARAS

Avraam PAPADOPOULOS

Angelos CHARISTEAS

Georgios KARAGOUNIS
Loukas VYNTRA

Alexandros TZORVAS

Michail SIFAKIS

Dimitrios SALPINGIDIS

Vasileios TOROSIDIS

Sotirios KYRGIAKOS

Theofanis GEKAS

Sotiris NINIS

Sokratis PAPASTATHOPOULOS

Pantelis KAPETANOS

Konstantinos KATSOURANIS

Stelios MALEZAS

Athanasios PRITTAS

Now such names call for longer tweets, again, too many Greek tweets. Twitter failed.

5. Argentina vs. Nigeria: Well just consider the populations of both countries plus Argentina fans all over the world plus Messi fans that know nothing about football but are supporting Argentina because he's with them. Too many Tango tweets. Twitter failed.

6. Next: England vs. USA, 1-1, the American goal was clearly the English goalkeeper’s (or the ball’s) fault, English supporters were very unhappy blaming their goalkeeper for costing them 2 points, and you know when English people are angry they’re really angry. Too many angry English tweets. Twitter failed.

7. Algeria vs. Slovenia: Algeria, the only Arab team to qualify to the World Cup after a vicious battle against Egypt for the last African spot in WC, lost 1-0 to Slovenia, now Algerians were “shocked” and all the Egyptian supporters were talking about what Egypt could’ve done had it qualified instead. Too many Egyptian what-ifs. Twitter failed.

8. Serbia 0-1 Ghana: Twitter was fine at the time of this match.

9. Germany 4-0 Australia, too many tweets because there were many goals, the match with the highest number of goals so far. Too many happy Germans (and German football fans) tweeting times four goals. Twitter failed.

10. Netherlands 2-0 Denmark: angry Danes because of Daniel Agger's own goal, long Dutch tweets because of, well, long Dutch words, (according to Google Translate, the words “Dutch football” translate to “Nederlandse voetbal” in Dutch, also, with names like Giovanni Van Bronckhorst and Maarten Stekelenburg in the Dutch team, you need longer tweets. Twitter failed.

11. Japan 1-0 Cameroon: everyone was talking about how the Japanese player who scored the goal is called Keisuke Honda and making jokes about cars :) too many Honda jokes. Twitter failed.

12. Italy 1-1 Paraguay: well Italians talk too much and too fast so they probably tweet like that too, also, too many happy Italy-haters out there. Twitter failed.

13. New Zealand 1-1 Slovakia: well Twitter was also fine, although I guess some people tweeted when New Zealand’s Winston Reid scored during the additional time, but not too many.

14. Côte d'Ivoire 0-0 Portugal: upon seeing Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, and what with the lack of goals, people started discussing their favorite shampoo brands and some actually defended Ronaldo’s choice: Johnson&Johnson's No More Tears. The heated argument caused the overload. Twitter failed.

15. Brazil 2-1 Korea DPR: all those Brazil fans were tweeting their disappointment with the Brazilian team’s performance against a team that qualified for the World Cup twice since the beginning of the tournament in 1930. Too many Brazil supporters, too many Brazil haters making fun of sad fans. Twitter failed.

16. On top of that, tweets about how annoying (or awesome) the Vuvuzela is, people asking FIFA to ban it because it’s too loud, others saying it’s cool and they like it and other Vuvuzela-related tweets. Too many loud tweets. Twitter failed.

And that's just the beginning, we haven't even seen the big matches yet, I hope the Fail Whale survives this month.

Note: no offense intended to any of the nationalities I mentioned, this is just for fun and all the teams and their countries are good people :)