Zuckerberg drops out of Google+ rankings

Shortly after becoming the most followed human on Google+, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has stealthily slipped beneath the public radar, as his account has disappeared from the Google+ popularity charts. Earlier this month, the Facebook CEO surprised netizens when he signed up for the service. He quickly eclipsed Vic Gundotra, the man behind Google+, as well as founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in terms of the number of people who have them in their own Circles. When over 20,000 had added Zuckerberg to their Circles, Gundotra, Page and Brin had been added to Circles of 13,000, 14,000 and 11,000 users, respectively. Social Statistics compiler Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten explained that Zuckerberg, along with Google management's Matt Curts, Lary Page, Sergey Brin, Vic Gundotra and Marissa Mayer all changed their profiles overnight and consequently dropped out of the Google+ top 100 list. Earlier, Zuckerberg confirmed his Google+ account to technology blogger Scoble, who is now the top Google+ user with over forty thousand followers. "Why are people so surprised that I'd have a Google account?" Zuckerberg told Scoble through a text message, calling out social media users who have apparently grown accustomed to tech executives shying away from their competitors' online services. TheNextWeb reports that Scoble is followed by TechTV pundits Leo Laporte (42,875 followers) and Kevin Rose (32,287 followers). Zuckerberg's Google+ account is now bare, save for his newly-replaced profile picture, in which he is smiling pleasantly, as opposed to his first poker-faced shot. "Of course, there will be some who will marvel at the lovely mental compartmentalization of someone who last year cheerily made lists of Facebook friends terribly public, thereby exempting them (until the usual uproar) from privacy settings. On Google+, however, we have no idea who Zuckerberg's friends might now be," writes Chris Matyszczyk on the tech site CNET. — TJD, GMA News