With the World Cup in Brazil two days off, Facebook debuted a World Cup hub Tuesday.
According to the Associated Press, Facebook users can find the hub by searching “Trending World Cup.”
The page will update followers every minute with new highlights, scores and other World Cup news. A feed on the page will exist for fans, players and teams to post about the tournament and communicate, and there will be an interactive map by for fans of specific players to locate fellow fans around the globe.
In addition, Facebook created another page, FacebookRef, where Facebook’s official tournament commentator, “The Ref,” will post commentary on the matches.
Rebecca Van Dyck, the head of consumer marketing at Facebook, said, “This is our first foray into this, especially for a big sporting event like this. We’re going to see how this goes. If people enjoy the experience it’s something we’d like to push on.”
As soccer is played all over the world, especially in many developing countries, Facebook has made the “Trending World Cup” page available on slower, more simple phones to give everyone the chance to interact with the World Cup through Facebook.
However, some critics have their doubts about Facebook’s ability to succeed with the World Cup page. One main critique is that “dropped voice calls are common even without the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans descending on the country. Accessing the Internet can be incredibly slow, and there’s even some worry about network blackouts.