1.   Oleole.com
Oleole.com has managed to bring the football community closer on the web. It was created in 2006 and has stayed active to witness and hold discussions on all major football Cups. The World Cup section offers live scores, travel info, and interesting facts about the game and matches. More than anything else, you have an ultimate community for football lovers to hold discussions which is full of football-driven content. You can join fan clubs for Football Leagues, podcasts, wallpapers, blogs and videos about football.

2.   Southafrica.info
We have seen South Africa tourism steer towards the World Cup as their new tourism mantra. World Cup 2010 is expected to be a turning point for South Africa in terms of tourism and development. Southafrica.info, a site which gives information for investors, tourists, citizens and South Africans abroad, has an exclusive page for the World Cup – www.southafrica.info/2010/. It includes an SA 2010 Fan kit which gives information about African culture and football, informative articles, match schedule and news about the World Cup.

3.   Twitter
Who could miss this one? There’s an official profile for FIFA World Cup 2010 with over 70,000 followers. It gives instant updates on the matches and comments on performances. Twitter has also come up with FIFA backgrounds for users. There’s also another profile for FIFAWorldCupTM, which gives unofficial FIFA soccer world cup tweets. This user has much more followers than the original profile with over 100,000 members following so far.

4.   Livesoccertv.com
I was so smitten by the crystal clear coverage of live action on Livesoccertv.com that I don’t regret not making a trip to South Africa to see the matches live. It also provides updates on scores, schedules, video, interesting info about various teams and even includes info on the best Soccer Pubs in the USA and Canada.

5.   Last, but definitely not the least, World Cup Songs on YouTube
Waka Waka and Wavin’ Flag are infectious! Whether it was Shakira’s moves or K’naan’s powerful lyrics, it spread like wildfire on the Internet. Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) is the new football anthem that was written and performed by Shakira. The song captures the spirit of Africa and the football festival, and with its rhythmical African sounds, the song represents the vitality and energy of the host continent.

Wavin Flag (The Celebration Mix) has been chosen as the official song of Coca-Cola for their 2010 FIFA World Cup. K’naan, who had composed the original song to show his support for the Haitian earthquake relief effort, has collaborated with artistes from various countries like Spain, Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia etc to produce new versions of the song for different regions. David Bisbel, Skank, Nancy Ajram, David Guetta and many others feature in these videos.

These examples show us that you can take a universally celebrated event, optimize the idea, and convert it into better traffic for your site. They have managed to get non-football-fans like me excited about the World Cup after all! If you know of any more sites that have used a simple idea like this to make it big, share it with us in the Comments section.  Also, don’t forget to mention the team who you think will win the Cup this time!

Social media had a smashing year in 2009. No one can dispute that. The web-wide popularity of social networks and social media sites reached a never-before high, and set the ball rolling for several revolutionary changes on the Internet. It is expected to do even greater things and touch greater heights in 2010. Let’s take a look at what social media experts think this year has in store for social media.

1. Social Media Will Get Real – The web is already beset by the real-time craziness, and I am so not overstating things. When real-time search debuted (on social media) last year, it was received so well that all the traditional search folks jumped to get a piece of all the real action. This year social media will take the real-time aspect on web one step further and work as a veritable web trend forecaster.

2. Social Media Marketing and Businesses – This year social media marketing will gather momentum as more and more businesses turn to this revolutionary method of internet marketing to promote their wares on the internet.

3. Social Media Vs. Email – The days when marketers almost exclusively depend on email marketing for all their promotional activities on the Internet will soon be over. This year will see online marketers choosing the very versatile social media with multimedia elements and nifty sharing options over emails.

4. Social While Mobile – Another change that we are sure to see in social media this year is the definite increase in the number of people who access social media sites through their smartphones. With so many improved and ‘smarter’ smartphones available on the market, technology and bandwidth will no longer hinder us from optimally experiencing social media while on the go.

5. Corporate Social Media – 2010 is the year when we’ll see the corporate world truly embracing social media. By setting up profiles on networks and corporate blogs, the previously inaccessible corporations will give themselves ‘humanized’ personas that everyone can easily relate to.

6. Social Media And Women – Women are slowly emerging to be the most popular social media demographic. 2010 will reveal just how much sway women can have on social media sites. Social media yet prove to the great leveler, completely smoothing out any kind of gender inequality, or better yet, it may tip the balance firmly in the favor of the female population on the net.

Social media may experience more changes than the ones mentioned above, or even completely different ones. One thing that is sure is it would be a mistake to ignore it and not try to benefit from it.
This post was inspired by another social media forecast post, in which these points are explained in detail.