Social media boom

Germany's 7-1 destruction of Brazil in the World Cup semifinal was enough to set the pulse racing - and it was the catalyst for a flurry of online activity.

Twitter confirmed the Brazil versus Germany game was the most tweeted sporting contest ever with 35.6 million tweets, smashing the previous World Cup record from the Selecao's Last 16 match against Chile by more than double. The German side scored four goals in the space of six minutes, as Twitter users gradually became awe-inspired by a memorable victory in Belo Horizonte.

As Toni Kroos scored the first of his two goals to hand Germany a three-goal advantage, 497,425 tweets were recorded in the space of a minute. That was bettered a minute later with Kroos scoring his second and 508,601 tweets.

But the record, breaking the previous record-setting data from the Brazil and Chile match (389,000) and Superbowl (382,000), was in the 60 seconds that followed Sami Khedira scoring Germany's fifth goal of the evening, triggering 580,166 tweets per minute. This animated map illustrates tweeting hotspots.

Scoring Germany's second goal and breaking the all-time World Cup scoring record, 36-year-old Miroslav Klose was the most mentioned player on Twitter ahead of Bayern Munich pair Toni Kroos and Thomas Müller. Unfortunately for Julio Cesar, Brazil's goalkeeper, he was the Selecao player most featured on Twitter ahead of Oscar and Fred.

Even the Australians were getting involved. Tim Cahill reacted to Brazil's loss to Germany, and he looks shocked.

His hand-over-the-mouth gesture was copied by plenty of other Aussies. Twitter users managed to unearth pictures of Luiz Felipe Scolari, the Brazil coach, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton caught in the action of 'Tim Cahilling'. More than 1,900 people retweeted Cahill's original tweet and others were picked up by many media outlets.

Brazil hot on interactions

Meanwhile on Facebook, the match prompted the highest number of interactions of all previous World Cup encounters with more than 60 million users having over 200 million interactions, according to Facebook's Germany base.

While Brazil went down with a whimper in Tuesday's defeat - their heaviest competitive loss since 1920 - the country's Facebook activity counted for a quarter of global interactions on the site. There were 16 million active users during the semifinal with 52 million user interactions. It was the most interactions during a World Cup match on the social media platform.

During the 90 minutes, the United States had the second highest number of interactions, while Mexico, Indonesia and the United Kingdom made up the top-five. Other Facebook statistics varied from its biggest competitor, Twitter, with Müller ranking as the most mentioned player ahead of Kroos and Klose.

David Luiz of PSG was talked about the most ahead of Marcelo of Real Madrid and Hulk. Yet, in spite of his absence from the semifinal, Neymar was spoken about 10 times more than any other player.

In the demographic results, social media continues to evolve how football fans consume the sporting action. The most active demographic was 18-24 year-old males, ahead of those aged between 25 and 34. Female users appeared third and fourth on the demographic 'top-five' in the same age ranking as males.

However, there were several references to Nazis and Adolf Hitler after Germany's win that dampened the social media buzz. A Malaysian MP referred to Hitler in a tweet, while in the United States, the term Nazi entered the top trends list as the game reached its climax.

Previously, during the match between the US and Germany in the group stages, 30,209 tweets were recorded with the term 'Nazi'.

Will Sunday break more records?

Social media will be prepared for a frenzy of interactions and activity on Sunday, as Germany competes for the crown of world champions. Their opponents could be either the Netherlands or Argentina - two teams, the Germans have fought out historic encounters with before, including the 1990 World Cup final and 1974 in Munich.

The benchmark has been set: 25 million Tweets during the Superbowl in February, 35.6 million tweets during the World Cup semifinal between Germany and the host nation Brazil. It seems inevitable that more records will be smashed as worldwide fans are absorbed by the biggest show in world football.