Soccer has long been sure of itself as the world's most popular game but now it must feel like its claim can't be tested thanks to social media.

This World Cup is the first event to break 1 billion interactions on Facebook and whether they love it or loathe it, you'd be hard pressed to find someone signed up to the site who has not mentioned it.

The explosion of both new and existing forms of social media since South Africa four years ago has given players, fans, advertisers, the media and the organizers more chance to interact with one another than ever before. You can now go on to FIFA's site and check out which players and teams are trending most. The answers are Neymar, Messi and Mandi, among the players, and Colombia, Brazil and Germany.

Speaking of teams, British daily The Independent has suggested that those willing to find out the most up-to-date team news could do worse than following the players on their official Instagram accounts. This is because soccer stars are well-known for being indiscreet on social media and are likely to inadvertently divulge team news on there.

All of the traditional mainstream media outlets are now dredging social media networks for their World Cup content. This could be GIFs and memes in response to in-game action, Twitter heat maps to show the reaction to an incident around the world or detailed analysis of mentions across the major networks to determine public reaction to individual players as positive or negative. Everything is covered in minute detail.

Why this sudden interest from social media in the World Cup and vice versa? It's partly because the online world is the one in which we now live our public lives and partly because the USA were quite good this time around and Americans still lead the world in social media, if not yet soccer.  

The beautiful game blowing up has not all been good news, though. FIFA and ESPN are trying to stop the Twitter-owned video-sharing app Vine from featuring World Cup videos in all of their amateur filmed, six-second glory. I don't know why they're bothering. From what I have seen at the games here in Brazil, those most interested in selfies and filming wouldn't know their Julio Arce from their elbow when it comes to soccer.