On Monday, the Twitter accounts of US president-elect Barack Obama, singer Britney Spears and other prominent figures were hacked which further led to sending of fake messages from their accounts to the micro-blogging service.

It was confirmed by Twitter founder Biz Stone, in a post on the official company blog that a total of 33 Twitter accounts had been hacked including those of Obama and Rick Sanchez, a CNN television anchor with tens of thousands of followers.

Stone informed, "We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue. Obama has not updated his Twitter account since winning the US presidential election in November."

He further added, "These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account."

The recipients were invited by the message from the fake Obama to take a survey and win 500 dollars worth of gas while the CNN anchor purportedly told followers that he was "high on crack" and would probably not be coming into work on Monday.

Basically, Twitter lets the user post real-time updates of 140 characters or less and has an estimated four to five million users according to a recent study.

It was launched back in August 2006, and has been embraced by a number of celebrities including Barack Obama, who has more than 150,000 followers, and four-time NBA champion Shaquille O'Neal of the Phoenix Suns.