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Perez Hilton's (real name Mario Lavandeira) claim to fame is a sometimes tacky, sometimes bitchy but always outrageous gossip blog that has him adored and hated in equal measure but always with high traffic volume: it gets more than 7.2 million visitors a month, making it one of the Top 500 sites on the web.

In second place on the Top 25 is Michael Arrington: all us technology geeks know him well as the founder and editor of TechCrunch who has his finger on Silicon Valley's pulse and knows almost every tech start-up worth knowing.

You may also remember the CrunchPad - a e-reader Arrington had a stake in and talked about lots but which disappeared in a puff of smoke late last year. This hard-nosed writer and editor also got criticism last year for his decision to publish stolen confidential documents belonging to Twitter employees that had been sent to TechCrunch by an anonymous hacker going by the handle of Hacker Croll.

Third on the list is Pete Cashmore, the handsome Scot who founded Mashable.com at the tender age of 19, which has now become a source for all things web 2.0 and social media.

Speaking of social media, it's a no-brainer that both Evan Williams and Biz Stone made joint fourth on the list: the co-founders of the most-talked-about website of 2009, Twitter, got it so right with something so simple. A service that involves tweeting, or posting 140 characters or less, has us engrossed and addicted. Besides, they're both clever guys, they talk openly and hell, we just adore them.

The fifth guy (where are all the girls?) to make the list is Kevin Rose, founder of social news site Digg.com, successful and somewhat serial entrepreneur, self-confessed Apple geek and co-presenter of the weekly podcast Diggnation. Rose doesn't just like being an entrepreneur, he likes to talk about being one and the tech crowd like to listen.

Amongst the other 20 web celebs that made the list include outspoken geek blogger and podcaster Robert Scoble, the energetic and enigmatic webcaster who likes to wax lyrical on all things gadgety and webby Leo Laporte and Wil Wheaton - the only guy to make the transition from actual celebrity (he was Wesley Crusher in Star Trek) and is now adored by online geekdom and accepted rightly as one of their own.

Photo: Celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton

By Marie Boran