Fifteen hours to go.

Besides watching matches on television, how will football fans (and others pretending to be fans just to fit in) stay on the ball with what is happening at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa?

Twitter.

The social media / networking site has set up a dedicated page, located at twitter.com/worldcup, not only to capitalise on the crazily watched sports tourney but also to get citizens from many of the 32 competing countries more familiar with, and perhaps eventually hooked onto, Twitter.

On the special Twitter site, football fans will be able to see news relating to the 32 countries competing for world football domination, tweets related to matches in progress and the algorithmically selected top tweets from players, journalists and fans.

Wired.com has this to say about another feature on Twitter especially created for the first World Cup to be held in Africa:

Perhaps coolest of all is what Twitter is calling “hashflags.” Any user who tweets with the relevant hashtag of a member nation – such as #usa, #mex, or #bra – will get a miniature version of that country’s flag appearing next to the hashtag. For all those who’ll be following the South African action from from afar, it’s a small yet creative way to show your followers some soccer spirit.

See the South Africa “hashflag” (from #rsa) below: