On Monday January 21 Justin Bieber became the most followed person on Twitter, overtaking Lady Gaga. As exciting as this is for the aficionados of Mr. Bieber out there, Ms. Gaga is still on top on the Facebook popularity index. According to the BBC, “Gaga still leads the way … with 54.98 million ‘likes’, compared to Justin Bieber’s 50.66 million.” Whether or not Mr. Bieber will close this gap is leaving analysts on the edge of their seats as the market sees a massive flurry of likes, pokes, and retweets in response to the still-developing story.
CNN pointed out that “based on their respective rates of growth, Bieber … [was] projected to overtake Gaga on Sunday afternoon … but [Gaga] put up a fight.” Prior to Ms. Gaga taking the mantle in 2010, the top Twitterer was Britney Spears who is now, according to CNN, only ranked sixth behind Mr. Bieber, Ms. Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna, and even politician Barack Obama. Could a similar fate await Ms. Gaga, or is this just a hiccough in an otherwise stellar career?
The CBC has broken down how Mr. Bieber achieved his success. Taking a look at the numbers, “Bieber has tweeted about eight times more than Lady Gaga has. Both Bieber and Gaga follow their fans back at around the same rate, following about 125,000 people each. But Bieber makes a point of retweeting his fans’ posts and following them back”. Mr. Bieber’s strategy might just be the new thing in this increasingly competitive market, but only time will tell for certain.
Now, there are some who think that it is absurd that this is an international news story being picked up by serious outlets, and people should have better things to talk about. The CBC, paragon of Canadian broadcasting and journalistic integrity, did cover this aspect of the story by showing memes and tweets that people are posting on the internet decrying the frivolity of modern public discourse.
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