English soccer star Wayne Rooney has continued his foray into social media, relaunching his Facebook page Friday and picking up 500,000 fans who "liked" it within 30 minutes, according to UK media reports.
Rooney, who first set up his page two weeks ago, sparked interest when he posted a short video welcome message, and then later a photograph of himself sitting on the couch with video game controller in hand, accompanied by the caption, "Just got home from training, now about to relax and play some FIFA. Looking forward to the game on Sunday!"
The 26-year-old Manchester United striker already has 2.7 million followers on Twitter -- which the Manchester Evening News reported was more than any other player in the English Premier League.
However, it remains to be seen if his Facebook page can attract as much interest as that of his former English teammate, LA Galaxy star David Beckham who has more than 15 million people who "like" his official page.
UK newspaper Metro noted that the level of interest seen in the first 30 minutes after Rooney official launched the page at midday Friday local time equated to him receiving 278 fans per second -- but by late Friday traffic had slowed with 574,130 people liking the page on the social networking site.
Meanwhile, the list of pages being followed by Rooney was short -- just SportsNew Media, which administers his Facebook page, Nike Football, EA Sports FIFA, his book publisher Harper Collins and Manchester United.
