Twitter lights up worldwide with every World Cup goal

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The World Cup bonds the world together like no other sporting event, and now, thanks to Twitter, we can see exactly how our fellow soccer fans all over the planet are reacting to major moments. Twitter's in-house analytics account @TwitterData has been publishing some fascinating statistics, none more so than the "heat maps" depicting certain real-time moments.

The heat maps use a combination of geotagging and key terms to determine who's tweeting about specific terms, and where they're doing so, with, for instance, red dots for Ghana and blue dots for the United States. With that in mind, see if you can figure out what point in the World Cup is happening right here:

Yep, those are the final moments in the instant-classic USA-Ghana showdown, where Ghana tied the score at 1-1 and the United States almost immediately responded with an ultimately decisive goal.

[Photos: Stars tweet support for Team USA]

Here's how the overall match appeared across the entire planet. Obviously, North America and Ghana took the most interest, but plenty of tweeters around the world weighed in as well. We see you pulling for Ghana, Europe, and WE'RE NOT GONNA FORGET IT:

Twitter recorded a total of 4.9 million match-related tweets during USA-Ghana. That's a major number, but not even close to the most active match of the World Cup. That honor belongs to Brazil-Croatia, which featured 12.2 million match-related tweets. Clint Dempsey's early goal was the most-tweeted moment of the World Cup so far, and Dempsey saw his followers leap from 447,000 to 472,000 over the course of the game.

[Related: USA has the largest foreign fan base in Brazil for the World Cup]

As for the most-mentioned players during the game? No real surprise there:

Expect these numbers to increase over the course of the World Cup. So if you're not already on Twitter, now would be a very good time to start.

Related World Cup coverage on Yahoo Sports:

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Jay Busbee

is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter.

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