The Beautiful Game, selfie sticks and Siberia…
If we think it’s become chilly here of late, spare a thought for the airline passengers in Siberia who had to get out of the plane in temperatures of -52°C to give it a push-start. Footage appeared on YouTube this week of around 20 passengers (wrapped up warmly) seen pushing the plane to aid take-off on the snow-covered runway – this particular upload has had more than 300,000 views so far.
There are 1.3 billion-plus people on Facebook and 500 million of these are football fans. Football superstar Ronaldo has over 100 million fans on the social networking site, the highest of any sports star in the world and second only to Shakira, while Manchester United claims to have 659 million fans worldwide. With such staggering statistics one would think that an industry with so many avid followers would have an enormous revenue… Well it doesn’t, relatively speaking of course. In fact, Real Madrid’s €521 million revenue in 2013 was the highest for any sports club in history which is equal only to the 120th largest company in Finland. Facebook has the potential to increase this revenue by connecting the many football fans across the world – so if football clubs begin registering all these fans they could be on to a serious money-maker. The clubs could then become official databases, meaning the information they collect regarding identities and consumption habits could seriously enhance their profitability.
As Americans celebrated Thanksgiving this week, millions of passengers were stranded because their flights were cancelled due to storms across the country. Welcome the Misery Map, a real time weather and flight data visualisation by the live flight-tracking site Flight Aware. The Misery Map shows the delays per airport around the USA in a nifty animation.
Love them or hate them, selfie sticks are everywhere at the moment and a key accessory for getting the perfect travel snaps. South Korea’s Science Ministry however, is not a fan and has announced that retailers selling "untested" versions of this contentious accessory could face up to a $27,000 fine or three years in jail. Their main concern is that selfie sticks with Bluetooth functionally should be classified as frequency-emitting communications equipment which would require testing before being approved for sale. It seems that the issues some are having with these "narcissi-sticks" go a lot further than plain old vanity.
Lisa
Lisa joined Travel Weekly nearly 25 years ago as technology reporter and then sailed around the world for a couple of years as cruise correspondent, before becoming deputy editor. Now freelance, Lisa writes for various print and web publications, edits Corporate Traveller’s client magazine, Gateway, and works on the acclaimed Remembering Wildlife series of photography books, which raise awareness of nature’s most at-risk species and helps to fund their protection.
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