WorldCupinion Experiences with an Android App for Real-Time Opinion Sharing During Soccer World Cup Games

Mobile devices are increasingly used in social networking applications and research. So far, there is little work on realtime emotion or opinion sharing in large loosely coupled user communities. One potential area of application is the assessment of widely broadcasted television (TV) shows. The idea of connecting non-collocated TV viewers via telecommunication technologies is referred to as Social TV. Such systems typically include set-top boxes for supporting the collaboration. In our work we investigated if mobile phones can be used as an additional channel for sharing opinions, emotional responses, and TV-related experiences in realtime. To gain insight into this area, we developed an Android app for giving real-time feedback during soccer games and to create ad hoc fan groups. We present results on rating activity during games and discuss our experiences with deploying this app over four weeks during soccer World Cup. In doing so, we highlight challenges and opportunities we faced and give an outlook on future work in this area. ACM Classification