Are you a football fan gripped in Word Cup fever? The world’s most widely watched sporting extravaganza began with a bang with Shakira’s mesmerizing performance “Waka Waka – This time for Africa” and kept millions of football fans glued to their TV sets during the last week.

To cash in on the popularity of FIFA World Cup, Twitter has created a dedicated page which shows the scores for current matches, schedule and tweets related to different teams participating in this star-studded tournament.

One-Stop World Cup Site

Twitter’s one stop world cup site is attractively designed, easy to navigate and presents all the required information at one-click. Just click on a country’s flag and you can see its upcoming matches and a stream of tweets about that country.

The ‘What’s Happening’ bar on the top of the page navigates you to live updates and tweets for matches currently in progress.

Best of both worlds

Twitter’s World Cup page is designed to get the best of both worlds – you get all the required information about the tournament plus it pulls out the relevant tweets and shows them on the same page. Twitter is using hashtags such as #fifa, #worldcup and a country’s three-letter abbreviation in order to filter the tweets to be displayed on this page. Here’s the complete list of abbreviation codes for all 32 nations participating in the tournament.

#alg – Algeria

#arg – Argentina

#aus – Australia

#bra – Brazil

#chi – Chile

#civ – Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)

#cmr – Cameroon

#den – Denmark

#eng – England

#esp – Spain

#fra – France

#ger – Germany

#gha – Ghana

#gre – Greece

#hon – Hondoras

#ita – Italy

#jpn – Japan

#kor – Korea

#mex – Mexico

#ned – Netherlands

#nga – Nigeria

#nzl – New Zealand

#par – Paraguay

#por – Portugal

#prk – North Korea

#rsa – South Africa

#srb – Serbia

#sui – Sitzaland

#svk – Slovakia

#svn – Slovenia

#uru – Uraguay

#usa – United State

The Twitter World Cup page represents a first of its kind aggregative service that Twitter has created for any sporting event. Though the page has a high percentage of spam messages, it’s a commendable effort from Twitter and opens up numerous possibilities of covering future events such as the Olympic Games.

Other Goodies

Besides the Twitter FIFA World Cup page, there are also a couple of other goodies which add to the fun experience – There’s a World Cup focused Suggested Accounts List which lets you follow other authentic sources in order to get games news, reviews and opinions. That’s not all, there’s a Top Tweets account which gathers World Cup tweets from roughly 150 players, journalists, organizations, and sites.

There are several other Twitter users whom you can follow in order to get the latest news from FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Some of the good ones include

2010 FIFA World Cup – Twitter page of the 2010 Organizing Committee News and updates.

SA2010 World Cup – Official 2010 FIFA World Cup South African Government website with all the information you need! News, personal updates and commentary.

FIFAWorldCupTM – The FIFA soccer world cup tweets. All the latest FIFA news and information on the 2010 soccer world cup. Updates, human interest, emphasis on players and coaches.

Is World Cup causing Twitter outages?

Twitter has experienced a downtime of nearly 5 hours since the start of World Cup in South Africa. Twitter has acknowledged that it is well aware of likely impact of the World Cup on its service. The company has warned users that there will be more downtimes over the next two weeks in order to conduct short planned maintenance. However, the downtime will not be during any World Cup game and users will be informed in advance for such upgrades.

Being an ardent soccer lover, I’m thoroughly enjoying the football world cup. Viewing Twitter’s World Cup page is a part of my daily routine and I’ll continue to do so till the grand finale. From what I’ve seen so far, Argentina looks to be the best team to lift the title this year. Which is your favorite team & why? Who do you think will win the FIFA 2010 World Cup?