Sir Alex Ferguson has retired from his 27-year tenure as manager of Manchester United Football Club. Who knew? Well, everyone on the planet, so it seems. I must confess I’m not exactly the world’s greatest fan of the beautiful game, but even I couldn’t help but take notice of the sheer strength of reaction and the outpouring of grief when the news broke midweek.
Confirmation of the departure came in the form of a tweet from Manchester United’s press office at 9:17am on Wednesday 8th May, which simply said: “Sir Alex Ferguson retires. #thankyousiralex.” The 43 character long statement prompted a deluge of tributes from fans, colleagues and even politicians. Real Madrid striker and former Manchester United player Cristiano Ronaldo took to Twitter simply to say: “Thanks for everything, Boss.” Even PM David Cameron commented on the news of the football legend’s departure, by tweeting: ‘Sir Alex Ferguson’s achievement at #MUFC has been exceptional. Hopefully his retirement will make life a little easier for my team #AVFC’.
As was to be expected, the news immediately dominated the traditional news channels and also proved a wider hit on Twitter. The initial tweet was re-tweeted and ‘favourited’ 18,000 times within the first hour* and the story accounted for eight of the top ten trending topics on twitter and four worldwide – all of which bore the #ThankYouSirAlex hashtag.
The Twitter response to major news stories has become a key indication of public opinion and the extent of national or global interest. With regards to Sir Alex’s recent announcement, his departure prompted a greater number of Tweets that were posted in response to Lady Thatcher’s death, but less that the number around the announcement of Jorge Mario Bergogolio as the new Pope in March. Indeed, according to data collected by Twitter, the hour after Thatcher’s death, a million tweets were posted in the first four hours, whereas Sir Alex’s news saw over 1.4m mentions on Twitter within the first hour alone.
There can be no doubt that Twitter has become a powerful and immediate tool and as a result, it has been used to deliver some of the most significant news stories to the world. Take the now famous ‘four more years’ tweet from President Obama, which became the ‘most popular tweet of all time’, on US election night.
The fact that Twitter was used to announce the long dreaded news of Sir Alex’s retirement has even prompted some speculation that it is due to the notoriously love-hate relationship between news organisations and football clubs and players. Whatever the reasoning, the overwhelming response seems somewhat ironic given Sir Alex’s previous comments that Twitter is a “waste of time”. I can’t help but wonder what he makes of the Twitter storm created by his retirement!
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