Zuckerberg turns the tables on Google rival

The irony is quite delicious. Less than a week after launching Google+, his answer to Facebook, Larry Page, the chief executive of Google, has found that the most popular person on his new social network is his arch-rival, Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Mr Zuckerberg, a man so famous, successful and popular that they made a movie about him, had 29,543 Google+ followers as of yesterday. Mr Page ranked a distant second with 19,878, while Vic Gundotra, the Google executive in charge of the new social network, and Mr Page's co-founder Sergey Brin, trailed in third and fourth with fewer than 16,000 followers.

Followers of Mr Page have been treated to old pictures of him kite surfing and an ice fall he photographed, as well as messages congratulating the Google+ team. Mr Brin, meanwhile, has been asking for help ironing out kinks in the service.

For Mr Zuckerberg, it is just obvious that he would want to check out the competition. "Why are people so surprised that I'd have a Google account?" he texted a friend, when people first spotted his profile. But, perhaps worryingly for the Google+ team, he hasn't been tempted to post anything yet. Facebook will do him just fine.