Elon Musk has surpassed former US president Barack Obama as the most followed account on Twitter. The 51-year-old Twitter CEO Elon Musk has gathered the most followers on the platform. The Billionaire tycoon has more than 133 million users, overtaking former US President Barack Obama who held the record since 2020.
According to Guinness World Records, Twitter has approximately 450 million monthly active users. With over 133 million users following Elon Musk, the platform CEO has approximately 30% of total Twitter users following him.
Elon Musk took control of Twitter on October 27, 2022. He then had about 110 million users. Within just five months, the number of followers has increased to 133 million. He was the third most followed Twitter user after Barack Obama and Justin Bieber.
According to the stats tracker Social Blade, Obama has lost 267,585 followers and Bieber has lost 118,950 over the last 30 days. While Musk has attained over 3 million, averaging over 100,000 new followers per day.
After purchasing Twitter, he dismisses then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal with other Twitter staff. In an open letter, Elon Musk shared the reason behind his taking control of Twitter.
The reason I acquired Twitter is that it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated healthily, without resorting to violence.”
Musk said.
The billionaire CEO since then has introduced various changes to Twitter. At the latest, the platform will start removing the legacy verified marks from non-Twitter Blue user accounts from April 1. The action comes as the firm works toward a standard where only paid subscribers and members of approved organizations will have verified marks for their accounts.
Twitter accounts are now verified with three colors – Gold check (companies), grey check (government), and blue for individuals (celebrity or not). All verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check activates.