5 months after spending $44 billion to buy Twitter, Elon Musk now has the largest number of followers on the platform – just over 133 million.
Musk has nearly 40,000 more followers than former US President Barack Obama, according to Business Insider reports, and Musk gained most of the new followers last April after he launched a bid to buy the social network.
According to reports in the months since the $44 million sale was completed last October, Musk appears to have directed resources to boosting the visibility of his tweets on the site.
And in February, research firm Platformer reported that Musk, whose tweet about the Super Bowl had less engagement than President Joe Biden’s, had ordered engineers at the company to work on a system that would transmit his tweets to the entire website, according to him. “Semafor” website, and “Al Arabiya.net” reviewed it.
Step back
This April, Twitter will remove the verification mark for users who do not pay a monthly subscription to the blue tick, an $8-per-month subscription service launched by Musk. This will include old verified users such as many celebrities and journalists, who have been given their blue checkmarks because they can be easily impersonated.
Starting in April, only Bloom Twitter subscribers will receive a check mark, according to the proposed changes. They will also benefit from boosted tweets, like Musk and other professional users of the site.
And tech journalist Ryan Broderick recently reported in his Garbage Day newsletter that only 0.2 percent of the site’s users subscribe to Twitter Blue.
