Cristiano Ronaldo hits 100-mln followers landmark on Facebook

Washington: Portuguese football team captain Cristiano Ronaldo has hit the 100 million landmark on social media and is still counting.

The Real Madrid star forward might be fighting it out with Argentina superstar Lionel Messi for the title of the world's top soccer player but Tuesday saw Ronaldo top 100 million fans on Facebook, way ahead of the nearest sporting opposition.

Ronaldo is adding fans at the rate of nearly one every second, 54 per minute on average and the next best tally is not an individual but a club, F.C. Barcelona, which has over 76 million 'likes' just edging ahead of Ronaldo's own team, European champion Real Madrid , CNN reported.

Ronaldo is also on top of the sporting world on Twitter with over 30 million followers, which is 10 million more than second placed Kaka, a star Brazilian footballer and former Real teammate of Ronaldo.

National Basketball Association (NBA) standout LeBron James has the third most popular sports profile on Twitter at 15.3 million followers and also trails on the Facebook front with his account 'liked' by a shade under 22 million people.

When Ronaldo tweeted he had won FIFA's Ballon D'Or for the second time on January 13, it received over 1,18,000 retweets and according to sports market researchers Repucom its total reach in teams of retweets, mentions and replies topped 1.04 million.

This compares to James' most popular day on Twitter, the announcement of his move to Clevelland Cavaliers, where the total figure was 6,72,000. Both sets of figures are undoubtedly impressive and James is thought to have a huge following in China, where Facebook and Twitter are banned, the report added.