With the World Cup in full swing, it’s no surprise that the controversial vuvuzelas are a trending topic on Twitter. The South African air horns have elicited criticism from players and spectators alike – their deafening sound drowns out the fans’ cheering as well the players’ communication on the pitch. We decided to use our social media monitoring tool to look at the conversation on Twitter.  Here’s what we found by analyzing 67,000 tweets from all over the world:

As expected, a majority of the conversation about vuvuzelas is negative: 45% of people hate them and an additional 12% think they should be banned outright.

On the other hand, a lot of people like them: 28% of the conversation was pro vuvuzela, with many saying they wanted one of their own!  This sounds like a product development and sales opportunity to us -  think of all the kids running around with their Vuvuzela Jr’s.

Finally, 14% of the conversation comments on how incredibly loud vuvuzelas are without expressing an opinion one way or another.

We’ll continue to cover the World Cup over the next few weeks – stay tuned for a post about Twitter’s collective guess on who will win it all.