Azkals beat Timnas Indonesia — on Twitter

The Philippine football team may have lost its match with Indonesia, but Filipino fans beat out their Indonesian counterparts on Twitter — even though Indonesians outnumber Filipinos 3 to 1 on the microblogging site. Indonesian technology news website Kompas Tekno admitted that the search terms #Azkals and Timnas Indonesia both became trending topics on Twitter during the Suzuki Cup game on Thursday, December 16. GMA News found that, at the height of the game, #Azkals topped Twitter's Trending Topics list with Timnas International at just second place. "Azkals" is Filipino slang for a street dog and the official nickname of the Philippine team. On the other hand, "Timnas Indonesia" is short for Tim Nasional Sepakbola Indonesia — literally, the Indonesian National Football Team. According to Kompas Tekno, by the end of the game, #Azkals was the second hottest trending topic worldwide on Twitter, with Timnas Indonesia trailing in fourth place. Moreover, according to data from Trendistic.com, despite a large volume of discussion about Timnas Indonesia in the hours leading up to the game, online buzz dipped in favor of #Azkals as the game went on. According to analytics company Sysomos.com, Indonesia has the most Twitter users in Asia, accounting for 2.34 percent of the microblogging service's global user base. In contrast, the Philippines ranks fifth in the region with just 0.85 percent. Based on official data provided by Twitter as of April this year, GreyReview.com estimates Indonesia's Twitter users at almost 2.5 million versus the Philippines' 900,000 users. "Topics break into the Trends list when the volume of Tweets about that topic at a given moment dramatically increases," Twitter says in its blog. "Twitter Trends are automatically generated by an algorithm that attempts to identify topics that are being talked about more right now than they were previously. The Trends list is designed to help people discover the 'most breaking' breaking news from across the world, in real-time. The Trends list captures the hottest emerging topics, not just what’s most popular. Put another way, Twitter favors novelty over popularity," the company explained. You can follow the author on Twitter at @tjdimacali. — RSJ, GMANews.TV