The speed of user response in the digital space to ‘real world’ events can be incredible and I was amazed last week by a great example.

While watching the Champions League semi-final between Barcelona and Inter Milan last Wednesday I got a text from a mate of a great UGC image which merged an incident from the game with a famous scene from The Shining. What shocked me was that I got the text before the game had even finished.

I worked out a timeline of events as below:

7.45pm – Match kicks off

8.01pm – Barca’s Sergio Busquets takes a cowardly dive and gets Thiago Motta sent off (see 21 seconds for the ’sneaky peek’ he gives to check the ref is going to send Motta off)

9.34pm – UGC image of ’sneeky peek’ posted on a football forum

9.36pm – Image texted to me by a mate

9.43pm – Game finishes

I’ve seen plenty of examples of football related banter following games in the past (like this following an Argentina World Cup game and this following John Terry’s penalty slip in the 2008 Champions League final), but they’ve always been the day after a match, I’ve never seen one done so quickly. Admittedly, it took an hour and a half from the incident taking place to the image being posted, but that’s still not bad going.

This example just re-enforces the assumption that more and more users are either watching matches online or watching matches on TV while surfing online simultaneously. It also shows that with access to the right tools, users can produce some seriously funny content very quickly – something that many brands would do well to harness and that some have been trying to.