Sports Stadium, the tool Facebook built to capture some of the sports-related chatter that happens on its site, had a bad Super Bowl as the hub failed to keep up with the game.
The 50th-anniversary game, which ended in a 24-10 win for the Denver Broncos, was watched by tens of millions of people, many of whom shared opinions, jokes, and general chatter on social media.
Conversations around sports events, especially ones in the NFL, have historically happened on Twitter, and Facebook wanted to get in on that. Over 28 million tweets were sent during last year's Super Bowl, according to Twitter, up from 24 million in the previous year.
The immediacy of Twitter, driven by Twitter's chronological feed, is part of the reason so many people flock to the service during the game. The New Republic says Sports Twitter, a subsection of the larger network, is "changing the way we watch sports."
For the first 11 minutes of this year's Super Bowl, Facebook had no trending topics related to the event, according to Danny Sullivan, an editor at Marketing Land.
—Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) February 7, 2016
—Ben Jata (@Ben_Jata) February 8, 2016
—Gabriel. (@GGOwusu) February 8, 2016
—Max Willens (@maxwillens) February 7, 2016