FA Cup comes to Twitter

Both ITV and Setanta Sport are to open up their coverage of Saturday's FA Cup Final by trialing Twitter conversations.

Viewers commenting on the game, in which Everton will take on Chelsea, will have their comments posted to the ITV.com website using Twitterfall, a Twitter application which aggregates comments in real time.

The Daily Telegraph reportedly uses Twitterfall in its newsroom to track Twitter in real time.

The paper abandoned a similar experiment to aggregate the budget, when some Tweeters used the occasion to write inappropriate comments which were fed directly to the Telegraph's news feed.

Free Twitter applications

To take part in the online conversation, all people have to do is use a hash tag in front of a keyword, such as #Everton, and the tweet will be reposted to the ITV.com website.

Another Twitter app, thruSITES, will show which players are generating the most chatter on Twitter and iPhone users will be able to post voice messages using AudioBoo, a Twitter like service in which people can post audio files.

"This experiment is a great way of reflecting the buzz about the game on our site and if it's a success, will no doubt pave the way for more efforts to engage football fans in new and interesting ways," said Dominic Cameron, managing director of ITV.com

Setanta Sports is also getting in on the Twitter game; match commentator Jon Champion will be hosting the first-ever Twitter commentary during Setanta's coverage of the game, which starts at 0900BST on Saturday morning.

"This will be the first time I’ve ever commentated on a game in two ways at the same time but I’m looking forward to it," Champion said.

ITV's integrated Twitter conversation goes live at 1300BST, two hours before kick-off.