It's certainly been a struggle for Google in the social networking space of late.

First its Orkut service failed to set the world on fire, unless you live in South America, then there was the ill-advised Buzz launch, which ended up causing more bad headlines for the company as privacy lawsuits flooded in from angry customers.

Things appeared to have gained a little momentum after co-founder Larry Page took the reins as chief executive in April, restructuring the search firm and apparently linking 25 per cent of staff bonuses to Google's performance in social media.

Now, just when the dust seems to have settled on Google's latest attempt to grapple some market share from the cold, blue hands of undisputed leader Facebook, Page's nemesis has struck back.

Yes, in a cruel twist of fate, according to Google's own stats ranking the top 100 most popular users of its new, and generally well-regarded, social networking service Google+, guess who comes in at number one? Yup, Mark Zuckerberg.

Page himself comes a fairly distant second, while Google SVP of social Vic Gundotra is in third place and co-founder Sergey Brin is fourth, but it is the Facebook supremo who sits proudly atop the pile with 21,213 followers and counting.

Sneak can only imagine what percentage of Google staff bonuses will be linked to getting him off the top spot should the rankings stay as they are for much longer.