Elon Musk pips Barack Obama to become most followed person on Twitter

Elon Musk, Twitter CEO and the world's second richest man, has amassed a massive fan following, especially on social media. With over 133.1 million followers on Twitter, a site owned by him, Musk is now the highest-followed person.

Musk surpassed former US President Barrack Obama who became the most followed profile in 2020 and currently has about 133 million followers.

According to Guinness World Records, Twitter has approximately 450 million monthly active users. With over 133 million users following Elon Musk, the Twitter owner has around 30% of total Twitter users following him.

Musk bought Twitter in one of the most expensive deals of all time at about $44 billion. The deal was completed in October 2022 and at the time, Musk had about 110 million followers and was ranked third after Obama and Justin Bieber.

In these six months, wealth-wise, he pipped the world's richest man Bernard Arnault twice but eventually fell back to being the second richest after Tesla shares took a hit due to litigation.

Recently, Musk's tweets were ubiquitous on users' Twitter feed. This also led to the social media platform's criticism, with some users even suspecting foul play at Musk's end.

Musk's tweets have been a market-moving nature and most often cryptic. He is also known for sharing the funniest memes and has a fan following for his tweets alone.

Ever since he took over the microblogging site, he has made major changes to the company including the introduction of a new paid verification program, global mass layoffs, and making Twitter's recommended tweets algorithm public to name a few.