Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is No. 1 page on Google(PLUS)

Any guesses as to who is the most popular person on Google(PLUS), the company's new social networking service? Ashton Kutcher, perhaps? Or Lady Gaga?

Actually, that title is currently held by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook – the very service that Google(PLUS) was meant to challenge.

As of Tuesday evening, Zuckerberg had nearly 35,000 people following his updates on the service, more than anyone else in a broad survey of Google(PLUS) profiles by Social Statistics, an outside service. His fan base exceeds that of Larry Page, one of the founders of Google and its recently appointed chief executive, who had only 24,000 people following him.

Google(PLUS) is less than a week old and is still not yet widely available to the public. But access to the service, which lets people share photos, links, status updates and video chats with groups of friends, is already in high demand among early adopters who are eager to play with its features. That includes Zuckerberg, who apparently signed up to keep tabs on his new adversary.

Neither Facebook nor Google confirmed whether Zuckerberg's profile was real. But his account is linked with those of several Facebook executives who are also on Google(PLUS), including Bret Taylor, the chief technology officer, and Sam Lessin, a product manager, suggesting that it is authentic. Zuckerberg has yet to post anything that can be seen by the wider public. His own description on his profile page says simply, "I make things."

"It makes sense that he wants to check it out," said Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, who is one of the founders of the technology blog The Next Web and built the Social Statistics service on a whim. "Everyone wants to keep an eye on the competition."

Zuckerberg's visit to his rival's turf may be an indicator that the social networking wars are reaching a new pitch. Plenty of major companies, including Google, Apple and Microsoft, are eager to gain access to the potentially lucrative trove of social data and other information that people share on these services. Facebook has long reaped the benefits of having access to such data, which helps it aim its advertisements more precisely.

"The battle for the future of the Web lies in the social experience," said Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner Research.

Source: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-07-07/news/29747636_1_mark-zuckerberg-larry-page-bret-taylor