Christiano Ronaldo has been crowned the most effective social networker in sport, according to Facebook's Head of International Business Development Christian Hernandez.

Speaking at the third annual Global Sports Forum in Barcelona today, Hernandez praised the way the Real Madrid star handled intrusions into his personal life through Twitter and Facebook, but also let fans on more intimate aspects of his life off the pitch too.

"Cristiano Ronaldo is the best athlete at self-marketing on social networks" said Hernandez. "Everyone remembers the shock created by him publishing the first photo of his child on Facebook. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United are by far the best clubs at using social networking. Their fans are responding very well.

"In contrast, I know there is some tension between Premier League players, clubs and the FA. Players would like to be free to express themselves but recent stories have shown that they can't be."

Hernandez crticisised stars who use a third-party ghost-writer to interact with their fans, isolating Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney in the process.

"Those who use Facebook poorly are those athletes who do not manage their presence themselves - it's as simple as that. For example, Wayne Rooney - it's just not what you would want to hear as a fan," said the Facebook executive.

Sure it's annoying, but I'm not sure I'd really want to know what goes in on the often-seedy mind of Wayne Rooney himself. I'd prefer the censored posts of a publicist than ramblings about ageing call girls any day!

Among the social groups where internet innovation has least impact, the homeless are probably those most left behind. But a new project called 'Underheard in New York' is granting an intriguing insight into the daily lives of this demographic. You can now follow participants Danny (@putodanny), Albert (@albert814), Derrick (@awitness2011) and Carlos (@jessie550) on Twitter.

The scheme was the idea of a group of interns at New York creative advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, who have provided four homeless men with pre-paid mobile phones and Twitter accounts. The four homeless men now have over 2,000 followers, who tweet them words of encouragement and sometimes job leads.

"Danny said he always wanted to tell his story, but hadn't because he thought no one would be interested," intern Rosemary Melchoir told the Los Angeles Times.

The tweets from the homeless men are the same as everyone's tweets in the sense they focus on everyday issues, but the reality of the men's situation may put our own gripes into contrast: "The employement agency will open at 9:am, I will travel to the Bronx, NY in order that I may iron my suit and shirt," said Derrick. "Hi putodanny sending love from new york to all people who suport me and the projec that we doing," said Danny.

Google's outgoing chief executive Eric Schmidt used his keynote speech in Barcelona to have a dig at Nokia after being snubbed by the Finnish mobile giant in favour of a partnership with Microsoft.

During the talk, Schmidt revealed that Google had held "extensive" discussions with the firm about using its Android operating system, before Nokia announced it would opt for Windows Phone 7 instead.

"We would've loved if they would have chosen Android; they chose the other guys," Schmidt said. "I think we were pretty straightforward. We would like them to adopt Android at some point in the future; that offer remains open." "We think Android was a good choice for Nokia, and we're sorry they made a different choice," he added. Nokia plans to begin shipping Windows Phone 7 handsets this year but is unlikely to shift large volumes of Microsoft powered smartphones until 2012.

During an intriguing question and answer session, Schmidt batted away questions over Facebook and whether it was encroaching on Google's business.

Schmidt said that Google still looked upon Microsoft as its biggest competitor and that Facebook was "additive", with no evidence suggesting that the social network was cutting into his firm's ad revenue.

When asked if there were any truth to the rumours that Google and Facebook were looking into buying Twitter, Schmidt responded by saying simply, "We love Twitter, and I love to tweet."

Google and Facebook are said to have entered talks with Twitter in order to assimilate the micro-blogging site into their web-conquering services.

Twitter are apparently asking for a whopping $10 billion for the company however, despite a December valuation of $3.7 billion.

However, according to the Wall Street Journal even a $10 billion deal could be a convservative valuation."People familiar with the situation said the company believes it can grow into a $100 billion company," the WSJ said.

200 million people are claimed to use Twitter (though that doesn't account for automated feeds and spam bots), and surely the might of either Facebook or Google would add considerably to that figure. You'd be unlikely to see a "fail-whale" anytime soon were Twitter to merge with either.

Twitter has always struggled with advertising revenues, managing a relatively small $45 million in 2010. $150 million is expected to be raised in 2011, and that figure would also likely jump dramitically higher were a takeover bid from the two web giants successful.

Twitter for a few years now has been the breaking news source of choice when it comes to the entertainment industry and in many cases political circles too. It now looks as though the football terrace chants of yester-year are also increasingly making their way online, with Premier League sponsor Barclays noting a massive football tweet explosion during the January transfer window.

They've put together the nifty infographic above (click to expand), detailing where the tweeting hotspots where.

Around a million Premier League tweets were sent during the January transfer window, and the majority of those centred around the big-name sales. As a result, Liverpool FC were the subject of nearly a third of those tweets thanks to the Torres sale (301,169), followed by Arsenal FC (110,901), Torres-buyers Chelsea FC (97,655) and Manchester United (86,249).

Google's 'Speak to Tweet' tool, launched only on Monday is already proving its worth by offering the thousands of Egyptian protesters a way of communicating with the outside world via the internet.

Egypt, which is currently facing a series of tumultuos demonstrations in an attempt to overthrow the long-standing president Hosni Mubarak, has effectively experienced a governement-enforced internet blackout during the protests in an attempt to contain violence and revolutionary gatherings.

Sites like Twitter and Facebook had previously been used to organise the movement, but have now been inaccessible for nearly a week. Egyptian protesters have now turned to 'Speak to Tweet' to get reports of the viloent clashes to the outside world.

The service works by allowing users to leave a message on an international phone number, which is then converted into a tweets over on the @speaktotweet Twitter page. The message's country of origin is displayed, and a link provides playback of the original voicemail message. Speak To Tweet makes use of one of Google's latest start-up acqusitions, speech recognition company SayNow.

Volunteer site Alive in Egypt are translating the tweets.

UPDATE: Word coming in now that full internet access has been restored to Egypt. More news as we get it.

The Twitter team have revealed which Tweets have been most retweeted over the course of 2010. As part of their #Hindsight2010 collection of Twitter trends, they've put together this neat little infographic on what have been the most shared comments on the micro blogging service.

All the usual suspects make the list, with celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Laday Gaga making up the majority of the list, but there is also room for comedic Tweets from the likes of shitmydadsays.

Read on for the 10 most re-tweeted Tweets of the year and links to their corresponding profiles.

10) shitmydadsays: Don't focus on the one guy who hates you. You don't go to the park and set your picnic down next to the only pile of dog shit.

9) Rihanna: Justin Bieber just flashed me his abs in the middle of a restuarant! Wow! He actually had a lil 6 pack! Sexy, lol! #Beliebersplzdontkillme

8) Kanye West: I'm sorry Taylor

7) Lady Gaga: I'm beautiful in my way, 'casue God makes no mistakes. I'm on the right track, baby I was Born This Way.

6) Joe Jonas: I cry because I love Justin Bieber!!!

5) Al-Qaeda: Just noticed Twitter keeps prompting me to "Add a location to your tweets". Not falling for that one.

4) Justin Bieber: Te quiero mucho mi amor.

3) Lil' Wayne: Aaaaaaahhhhhhmmmmm baaaaakkkkkkkkkk!

2) Dizzy Drake: We always ignore the ones who adore us, and adore the ones who ignore us.

1) Stephen Colbert: In honor of oil-soaked birds, 'tweets' are now 'gurgles.' http://bit.ly/cIhZNf

Earlier this week Google and Yahoo both released their lists of the top searches for 2010. Google even made this great little video.

Now Twitter has analyzed the roughly 25 billion tweets sent over the past year to figure out the top 10 trending topics across eight categories: news events, people, movies, television, technology, World Cup, sports and hashtags.

Twitter is one of the leading resources for quickly finding information on current events, so it should come as no surprise that their results paint a great picture of what the world was interested in over the course of 2010.

The Gulf oil spill and the Haiti earthquake were two of the biggest news stories of the year. While the FIFA World Cup, the accompanying vuvuzelas, and the psychic octopus Paul grabbed the worlds attention. The iPad and Android, dominated the world of tech, while Inception, Harry Potter and Justin Bieber were the most talked about in entertainment.

Check out the top 10 here:
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul

The top trends for the individual categories can be found here

Are Twitter preventing WikiLeaks from trending? That's the rumour doing the rounds on the "internetz" right now, as conspiracy theorists are claiming that Twitter are the latest company to pull support for the whistle blowing webiste. Despite a huge buzz around the ongoing WikiLeaks revelations, the site remains suspiciously absent from the top topics list.

Twitter's response? WikiLeaks just ins't proving all that popular.

"Given the widespread confusion about #wikileaks, we'd like to offer a longer explanation of how we measure trends on Twitter, and why some popular topics may not make the list," reads the Twitter blog.

"This week, people are wondering about WikiLeaks, with some asking if Twitter has blocked #wikileaks, #cablegate or other related topics from appearing in the list of top trends. The answer: Absolutely not. In fact, some of these terms, including #wikileaks and #cablegate, have previously trended either worldwide or in specific locations."

Twitter seem keen to distance themselves from the censorship claims, particularly when the likes of Mastercard and Visa have come under attack from hackers since stone-walling Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks team.

Despite Assange's recent arrest, the WikiLeaks debacle continues, with cables still being released even though the editor-in-cheif has been reprimanded for alleged sex crimes.

Today I came across this great little micro site TweetJockey. Created by Jonathan Plackett a creative at London ad agency Albion, the site allows you to race twitter search terms against each other to see which is being talked about most.

My favourite race has to be between Santa and Jesus. This is probably unsurprising, but Santa keeps kicking Jesus ass.

Check it out here www.tweetjockey.co.uk

Earlier this week Tweetdeck released its first Web client as a Chrome app in the brand new Chrome Webstore. ChromeDeck as it has been dubbed, is the first browser based version of the popular real time streaming app for twitter.

Having played around with it for a few days now, there are a number of things that I love.
Built in HTML5, the app is highly responsive and runs very smoothly. Probably one of the greatest additions is an integrated inbox and replies section. This means you can now see replies to all your accounts in one column. I personally run multiple accounts, and frequently forget to check some of them, so this will be a great help.

The Foursquare column now only display check-ins only from your actual Foursquare friends, and not all of your Twitter contacts, as it did before. All though it is only a small change, I was excited to see that you can re-order your columns with a simple drag and drop.

Despite all this, I don't think I will be switching over from the desktop version quite yet. There are still some little bugs that need to be sorted and additions that need to be made before I would consider switching. One of the biggest being, the fact that there are no pop-up notifications. This is expected to be added in the coming weeks, but is not there yet.

Over all if you are a casual twitter user, you will probably really like ChromeDeck, but if you are a more serious users you might want to wait a few more weeks until all the bugs are worked out.

Here's a social media lesson showing why it's very important to pick your online usernames carefully, especially if you're not a fan of cricket and your forname happens to be Ashes.

Massachussets-based @theashes chose her Twitter username based on the fact that her real-life name is Ashley, or Ashes for short. Totally oblivious to the cricketing battle taking place between England and Australia over the weekend, she's been inundated with messages from cricket fans hoping to discuss the sporting event, without having first checked to see whether or not @theashes was the tournament's official Twitter feed.

Understandably, Ashley got a bit peeved. "I AM NOT A FREAKING CRICKET MATCH!" reads one impassioned tweet.

And, as we all know, the t'internetz aren't exactly the best place to show you're annoyed. She's now getting thousands of messages from people who couldn't care less about cricket, just in order to get another angry outburst from her.

Still, it's not all bad; Quantas Airlines, spotting the perfect PR opportunity, have started the #getashestotheashes hash-tag, offering her free flights to Oz.

The lesson to be learned? Brands need to snap up appropriate social media names straight away to avoid confusion, while parents shouldn't name their children after international sporting events!

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has been talking about the possibilities of setting up a Twitter News service. With the micro-blogging platform an increasingly valuable source for journalists, its links to Google, Bing and Yahoo could make a new news stream fairly easy to set up.

"I think a Twitter news service would be something that would be very open and shared with many different news organisations around the world," he told Reuters.

However Twitter communications main-main Sean Garret was quickly tweeting to nip the suggestion in the bud: "No plans for Twitter news network...Biz pondered how news orgs could so this on their own (or together). Perhaps w/direct access to Twitter data all hypothetical."

Either way, Biz Stone's definitely thinking about it. Could a Twitter News service work? Or is too much of a jump from tweeting on X-Factor hairstyles to crowd-sourced reporting?

Ever wondered how Twitter comes up with its "Who to Follow" suggestions? Well it turns out that each user has a unique reputation score.

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit, Twitter founder Evan Williams revealed that a team of "science and math people" have generated a top secret algorithm to help you decide who is worth your time on the micro-blogging service.

While he's keeping the details close to his chest, he did state that maybe they would eventually release what it takes to become one of the Twitter elite.

But to be honest, it doesn't take a lot to figure out how it works really: power tweeters with plenty of followers whose posts are re-tweeted most often are the likely candidates.

Via: TechCrunch

Stephen Fry has offered to pay the cost of any fines given to Twitter joker Paul Chambers after he was convicted of "menacing" conduct on the micro-blogging service.

Chambers had earlier in the year sarcastically threatened to bomb a local airport after it closed.

"Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!" was Chamber's tweet in question.

However, after being taken to court and losing his appeal, Chambers now faces up to £3,600 worth of legal fees and fines.

A regular Twitter user with a massive following, Stephen Fry has put himself forward to help. "My offer still stands. Whatever they fine you, I'll pay" said Fry.

Fry is not the only high-profile Twitter user to offer their support. Comedian Dara O'Briain said "An astonishing, ludicrous result in #twitterjoketrial. A victory for crushing literalism and scaremongering by the judiciary. Horrible."

Actor David Mitchell shared the sentiment, saying "So that's the banning of sarcasm, irony, sub-text and any of the other subtleties of language that we use AS GROWN UPS [...] he's being punished for flippancy" joking that "flippancy is important".

You can follow any developments in the story by checking out the hashtag #twitterjoketrial .

While the student fee increases that have inspired today's protests in London are no laughing matter, we cant help but be tickled by the response from the Twitter hardcore . No-one is spared from the acerbic wit of the Twitterati!

Follow the #demo2010 hashtag to get a giggle in these politically dark days.

Here's a handful of our favourite tweets so far.

@welshracer : RT @BristleKRS: Sign at #demo2010: 'KAY BURLEY IS WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU DON'T INVEST IN EDUCATION'.

@NekoShuffle: I suspect a lot of students who use @foursquare are becoming the mayor of millbank right now #demo2010

@GilletteCondor: Apparently Gazza is on his way to Millbank with some chicken and a fishing rod #demo2010 #nus

@Ashley_Norris: Windows smashed, petty vandalism, riotous behaviour. Yep the #demo2010 is just like a Bullingdon Club night out in 1985 isn't it Boris/Dave?

@ShaunLowthian: Still, I hope the NUS has a Social Secretary because that is the mother of all bar crawls just waiting to happen #nus #millbank #demo2010

@DavidCameronEsq: Baroness Warsi has escaped the #demo2010 rioters at Millbank by jumping on her broomstick and flying over the crowd

@Swineshead: If you'd just tuned in to Sky News, you'd think the world was on fire and the Queen had been squashed by anarchy itself. #demo2010

@JonathanHaynes: Deal Or No Deal starts in 35mins, that'll clear out Millbank. #demo2010

@the_Arts_Now: I'm not being judmental, but the students on this march look like borstal inmates! What do they teach in PSE these days #demo2010

@PinkyPinkyMoon: Students on roof have released a statement: "We're on the roof, lol" #demo2010

UPDATE: - Here's a few more we just couldnt resist adding in

RT @adambanksdotcom: Apparently Gazza is
on his way to Millbank with some chicken and a fishing rod #demo2010

RT @guidofawkes: Ground floor rioters setting fire to CCHQ building.
Rioters on top of the roof. This could be Darwinian natural selection
at work #demo2010

RT @CloMre: Q: "Why aren't the cameras on the peaceful demonstrators?"
A: "Because they're piss boring Belle & Sebastian fans." #demo2010

RT @Llanos24: Tenner says that the Student Protests turn out to be
another T-Mobile advert! #demo2010

Image credit - @annajleach

Sh*tMyDadSays one of the world's most popular Twitter accounts, was attacked by hackers yesterday according to online security experts Sophos.

The hilarious account, run by 29 year old Justin Halpern, collates the ridiculous and brutal words of wisdom that Justin's dad dishes out every day. Stuff like this:

"You came out of your mom looking like sh*t. She thought you were beautiful. Don't know what scared me most, your looks or her judgment."

Just one little gem that helps explain why Sh*tMyDadSays has ammassed 1.8 million followers. However, the account was attacked by scammers and hackers yesterday, fooling many followers into clicking a malicious link supposedly advertising cheap laptops.

Justin responded with this tweet upon noticing the problem: "Sorry, shit my dad says got hacked. My dad isn't trying to sell you a crappy lap top, I promise. Don't open any links."

"Of course it's serious when such a popular Twitter account has its security breached. In theory, malicious hackers could have posted a link to malware or a phishing site - rather than just what appears to be a more traditional spam page," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"It's unclear on this occasion whether the Twitter password was phished, whether it was cracked through a dictionary attack or spyware, or whether the person behind "Sh*tMyDadSays" made the mistake of using the same password on multiple websites. Computer users should always choose a hard-to-guess non-dictionary word as a Twitter password, and never use the same password on multiple websites."

Wonder what Justin's Dad had to say about that?

Ever wished you had a cute little robot to read your twitter stream aloud to you?
No, neither have I, but some people must, as that is just what the Charatter does.

The slightly creepy Tweet reading bear from Japan came out this month and is available for $25.

You may only have 140 characters to play with, but that doesn't stop Twitter users from typing out tall tales. New research from insuarance firm Direct Line shows that people feel far more comfortable lying when using the micro-blogging paltform than if they were to say the same things during a face-to-face conversation.

The "Straight Talking Report" found that just 20% of the 2,012 people polled would be as honest on Twitter as they would be in the flesh.

Texting threw up similar figures, with only 17% of men and 21% of women claiming to be as truthful when using SMS messaging as they were in person.

"Modern technologies, such as smartphones, social networking and instant messaging have been hailed as innovations in the way people interact, removing obstacles to conversation and allowing for openness of discourse," comments psychologist Glenn Wilson.

"However, we sometimes use these means of communication rather than a face-to-face encounter or a full conversation when we want to be untruthful, as it is easier to fib to someone when we don't have to deal with their reactions or control our own body language."

Like a first-born child, your first kiss or your first beer, your first tweet can be a momentous occassion. Sort of. Well it certainly is when you use it to go head-to-head with the tech titan Steve Jobs in an attempt to out-nerd the King of the Fanboys.

That's exactly what Google's Andy Rubin did anyway.

The VP of engineering for the search giants hit back at Steve Jobs, who earlier this week slammed Android tablets as DOA, and defended accusations that his iOS platform was too closed for developers.

Rubin respoded with this tweet to open his account:

"the definition of open: "mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make"

Goobledygook? Not quite; that coded message represents the very open nature of the open-sourced Android OS. It's basically nerd-speak for a "Yo Mama" cuss, showing in scientific terms that the Android ethos is to welcome developers with open arms, unlike laying down too many hoops to jump through as Apple tend to do.

Jobs himself doesn't have a Twitter account, so don't expect a slagging match to ensue on the micro-blogging platform. But with an Apple event scheduled for October, we wouldn't expect the day to pass without Jobs making a sly dig back at Rubin.