An unofficial CNN breaking news service has overtaken Barack Obama as the world's most popular Twitter feed.
The cnnbrk (CNN Breaking News) feed is shrowded in some mystery but is believed to be operated by James Cox, a developer and entrepreneur who set up the service as a way of getting breaking news to people's phones as quickly as possible. The Guardian's Jemima Kiss blew Cox's cover in August last year.
There are some clues about the origins of the cnnbrk feed. Cox is the only person that cnnbrk follows. He is described in his biography as being based in London and as "having way too much fun".
The ccnbrk feed posts simple summaries of stories with no hyperlinks to the full story. In contrast, the official CNN feed features links back to the CNN site and has attracted just 31,308 followers.
It is no surprise that interest in Obama's Twitter feed is on the wane. The new US president was a profilic tweeter in the run-up to the US election. Since his victory however tweets have been few and far between. Obama has tweeted only twice in 2009 with the last occuring on 19th January.
As Obama's Twitter popularity faces its first major challenge, so Stephen Fry appears to have reached his peak. The British entertainer has been passed by Britney Spears and the official Twitter feed in recent weeks and now sits in fifth place in terms of popularity.
Top ten Twitter figures at 12pm (GMT)
cnnbrk 357,209
BarackObama 353,337
Twitter 294,979
BritneySpears 266,426
StephenFry 253,842
NYTimes 228,644
AlGore 221,533
KevinRose 220,686
LanceArmstrong 217,205
THE_REAL_SHAQ 212,125
