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Venezuelans 'Shout' Longest 'Gooool!' on Facebook


This map, provided by Facebook, shows how many characters, on average, users from each country type their version of the word "goal" in Facebook posts.
This map, provided by Facebook, shows how many characters, on average, users from each country type their version of the word "goal" in Facebook posts.

When a goal is scored in the World Cup, Venezuelans are the most exuberant in their celebrations and take the longest to “shout” “gol,” online at least, according to Facebook.

The social media giant’s data analysis team has been poring over the one billion (and counting) postings about the World Cup and ranked the countries which used the most characters to celebrate a goal.

Venezuela topped the list using, on average, using just over 21 characters to write “goooooooooooooooooool.” They were followed by Gabon (18 characters), Tunisia (13 characters), Mexico (13 characters) and Montenegro (13 characters).

But not all languages like to stretch the word out.

“Only in Spanish, Portuguese, English, and German do we find significant use of redundant characters in exuberant posts,” wrote the Facebook data analysis team in a blog post.

“Gol” topped the list of the most used word to express a goal, with “goal” coming in second. Third, was “ประตู,” which means goal in Thai, followed by “tor” in German and “ゴール” in Japanese.

According to Facebook, goals scored by Brazilian star Neymar Jr. garnered the most exuberance.

This map provided by Facebook, shows how people say "soccer" all over the world.
This map provided by Facebook, shows how people say "soccer" all over the world.

Neymar goals took four out of the top five moments that were most commented on, according to Facebook. However, it was a Mexican goal that was the most cited, when Javier Hernández scored that country’s third goal against Croatia on June 23.

Facebook also looked at how fans from around the world referred to soccer.

The most common was soccer, followed by football, fútbol, futebol and futbol.

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