On the day that Elon Musk is celebrating his birthday, he gained another milestone - he reached 100 million followers in Twitter, the platform that he is planning to acquire.
What does it mean to have 100 million followers? With this huge number of followers, Musk is now being followed by about 43% of the people who are using the microblogging service.
However, this percentage may not be accurate since as Musk suspects, a lot of those accounts are bots.
Did he make it to the top five? Unfortunately, Musk only ranks sixth among the most-followed people on Twitter.
Barack Obama remains first with 132.1 million. He is followed by Justin Bieber with 114.1 million. Third is Katy Perry with 108.8 million. Fourth and fifth are Rihanna and Cristiano Ronaldo, respectively.
The Growing Twitter Followers of Elon Musk
According to Benzinga, it is believed that the first official tweet from Musk was on June 4, 2010.
"Please ignore prior tweets, as that was someone pretending to be me :) This is actually me," Musk tweeted.
Musk has been one of the most active CEOs on Twitter over the years. This is evidenced by his followers count surge.
Among the most popular topics that Musk was posting on Twitter are the companies he leads. He posted updates on Tesla and SpaceX. He is also posting memes. And you would also find tweets about Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies.
In January 2019, Musk amassed a total of 23.9 million followers. A year after, in January 2020, he already has 30.4 million followers. This further increased in January 2021 with 41 million followers. As of January 2022, his followers reached 72.1 million.
As of writing, Musk is in the process of acquiring Twitter for $54.20 per share. During the Qatar Economic Forum, Musk stated that there are several unresolved matters related to the Twitter deal. These are the approval of the deal by shareholders, the bot issue, and whether the debt portion of the deal will be able to come together.
Read Also: Elon Musk's Bid to Buy Twitter Gets Endorsement From Its Board of Directors
Musk has Been Silent on Twitter Since June 22
In 2009, three years after Twitter was launched, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX joined the platform.
Since the time that he joined the platform, Musk posted around 18,500 tweets. His tweets cover a huge range of subjects.
However, according to Digital Trends, since June 22, Musk hasn't shared anything on the microblogging site. This marked "one of his longest stretches of Twitter silence in recent years."
It is not clear whether Musk's silence has something to do with his recent bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion. The deal was proposed in April but it isn't signed and sealed until now.
A rough patch was hit earlier this month when a lawyer representing Musk said that the billionaire could walk away from the deal unless Twitter handed over the data on the number of fake and spam accounts on the platform.
Twitter acted on the request and said that they will provide the firehose data. However, there is no information yet as to whether Musk and his team would accept the data provided by Twitter.
Related Article: Twitter Board Has Zero Care About Elon Musk's Doubts, Plans To 'Close' and 'Enforce' $44 Billion Sale
