Most Followed Twitter Accounts

Posted on  by 



  • It's account of God. It has 5.1M followers without verified account. @TheTweetOfGod God (@TheTweetOfGod) Twitter.
  • As of March 2021, former U.S. President Barack Obama was the most followed person on Twitter. His account was followed by nearly 130 million people. Second-ranked singer Justin Bieber's account.
  • The Most Followed Twitter Profiles. Profiles Ranked by Followers on April 23,2021 Powered by Trackalytics.com; Rank Profile Total Followers (today) Total Following.
One Direction - and its members - make up six of the most followed music industry accounts on Twitter. Photograph: Ian West/PA

The Most Followed Twitter Profiles. Profiles Ranked by Followers on April 23,2021 Powered. In the world of social media, Twitter is the go-to platform for short-form content. Users love Twitter because it enables you to connect with friends, follow trending topics, or just share whatever comes to mind. Keep this guide handy as you dive into the Twitterverse to learn everything you need to know about getting started on the platform.

Twitter launched its standalone music app yesterday following a week long beta release for selected musicians. We've taken a look at musicians on Twitter and it looks like the decision to give music special treatment is backed up by the data.

Eight of the ten most followed Twitter accounts are musicians, with teen favourites Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry claiming the top three spots, each boasting over 35m followers. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, is the first non-musician on the list, ranked fourth.

Even when we broaden the scope to the 100 most followed accounts, half of them are musicians. The remainder consist largely of celebrities from the film, sport or TV industries plus some news organisations and digital brands.

Click on the buttons below to see musicians' share of the top20, top50, top100, top250.

Of the current top 100 musicians on Twitter, 57 come from the US, where most of Twitter's users are based. The UK comes in second with 14 representatives, although it's worth noting that six of those are from British-Irish boyband One Direction (the band's official account plus each member's account).

At the time of writing it takes 3.3m followers to make it onto the list of the top 100 most popular music artists on Twitter. For a spot in the top 10, more than 16m followers are needed. On average, musicians who made it onto the list have been on Twitter for 49 months, since early 2009. Most of them have been avid tweeters since (or, more likely than not, had avid tweeters take care of their accounts). The median number of tweets sent from those musicians' accounts stands at 4,425.

Accounts

Can you do anything interesting with the data?

Data summary

Twitter's 100 most followed music accounts

Click headings to sort columns. Download the data

Overall Twitter Rank
Twitter handle
Followers
Source: Public domain
1 1 Justin Bieber @justinbieber Canada 37617919
2 2 Lady Gaga @ladygaga USA 36218810
3 3 Katy Perry @katyperry USA 35048911
4 5 Rihanna @rihanna USA 29217969
5 6 Taylor Swift @taylorswift13 USA 26317147
6 8 Britney Spears @britneyspears USA 25757555
7 9 Shakira @shakira Colombia 20373031
8 10 Justin Timberlake @jtimberlake USA 18854773
9 17 Jennifer Lopez @JLo USA 16407892
10 18 Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ USA 16257145
11 19 Bruno Mars @BrunoMars USA 15895645
12 21 P!nk @Pink USA 14883194
13 22 Selena Gomez @selenagomez USA 14794264
14 23 Marshall Mathers @Eminem USA 14187868
15 25 demetria lovato @ddlovato USA 13247361
16 26 Adele @OfficialAdele United Kingdom 13008150
17 27 Alicia Keys @aliciakeys USA 12654136
18 28 Chris Brown @chrisbrown USA 12418597
19 29 Harry Styles @Harry_Styles United Kingdom 12264098
20 31 Miley Ray Cyrus @MileyCyrus USA 11763425
21 32 One Direction @onedirection United Kingdom 11199725
22 34 Lil Wayne WEEZY F @LilTunechi USA 11111693
23 35 Niall Horan @NiallOfficial United Kingdom 10940372
24 38 Snoop Dogg @SnoopDogg USA 10626289
25 41 Louis Tomlinson @Louis_Tomlinson United Kingdom 10042876
26 42 Mariah Carey @MariahCarey USA 10015009
27 43 Liam Payne @Real_Liam_Payne United Kingdom 10009445
28 44 Coldplay @coldplay United Kingdom 10002184
29 45 Wiz Khalifa @wizkhalifa USA 9951338
30 47 Pitbull @Pitbull Cuba 9665355
31 49 Avril Lavigne @AvrilLavigne Canada 9435229
32 50 Ashley Tisdale @ashleytisdale USA 9343766
33 51 Kanye West @kanyewest USA 9310315
34 53 Alejandro Sanz @AlejandroSanz Spain 8965234
35 54 iamdiddy @iamdiddy USA 8958131
36 56 Zayn Malik @zaynmalik United Kingdom 8761045
37 60 Ricky Martin @ricky_martin Puerto Rico 8483946
38 62 David Guetta @davidguetta France 8292003
39 69 Ivete Sangalo @ivetesangalo Brazil 7895392
40 70 50cent @50cent USA 7802833
41 72 Juanes @juanes Colombia 7515720
42 73 Beyoncé Knowles @Beyonce USA 7503011
43 75 Ludacris @Ludacris USA 7380986
44 78 Usher @UsherRaymondIV USA 7239902
45 79 Agnes Monica @agnezmo Indonesia 7235243
46 89 will.i.am @iamwill USA 6430308
47 91 Paulina Rubio @paurubio Mexico 6413946
48 92 Jessie J @JessieJ United Kingdom 6413816
49 97 Jessica Simpson @JessicaSimpson USA 6317136
50 100 Trey Songz @TreySongz USA 6173332
51 101 Ed Sheeran @edsheeran United Kingdom 6167140
52 104 Nick Jonas @nickjonas USA 6012511
53 107 Carly Rae Jepsen @carlyraejepsen Canada 5858141
54 112 Sherina Munaf @sherinamunaf Indonesia 5698343
55 127 T-Raww @Tyga USA 5303959
56 132 joe jonas @joejonas USA 5132156
57 133 Soulja Boy @souljaboy USA 5066129
58 136 Jason Mraz @jason_mraz USA 4932803
59 138 Kelly Rowland @KELLYROWLAND USA 4867481
60 139 David Bisbal @davidbisbal Spain 4831240
61 140 Calle 13 @Calle13Oficial Puerto Rico 4820257
62 145 Luis Fonsi @luisfonsi Puerto Rico 4699810
63 150 Thalia @thalia Mexico 4576359
64 152 Queen Latifah @IAMQUEENLATIFAH USA 4563508
65 153 Daddy Yankee @daddy_yankee Puerto Rico 4562339
66 156 Vidi Aldiano @vidialdiano Indonesia 4527451
67 158 Cody Simpson @CodySimpson Australia 4511128
68 163 LMFAO @LMFAO USA 4431082
69 169 Luan Santana @luansantana Brazil 4375047
70 170 Christina Aguilera @xtina USA 4369579
71 180 Cher Lloyd @CherLloyd United Kingdom 4249328
72 181 Olly Murs @ollyofficial United Kingdom 4249175
73 185 afgansyah reza @afgansyah_reza Indonesia 4192871
74 186 Lenny Kravitz @LennyKravitz USA 4188820
75 187 Jonas Brothers @JonasBrothers USA 4185361
76 191 John Legend @johnlegend USA 4158382
77 195 Lily Allen @lilyrosecooper United Kingdom 4113226
78 196 Rev Run @RevRunWisdom USA 4110300
79 199 Adam Levine @adamlevine USA 4099147
80 214 Sandy Leah @SandyLeah Brazil 3917949
81 216 Mary J. Blige @maryjblige USA 3890543
82 223 Sean Kingston @SeanKingston USA 3801223
83 227 Jaden Smith @officialjaden USA 3753717
84 228 Big Sean @BigSean USA 3740183
85 230 Cheryl Cole @CherylCole United Kingdom 3726256
86 232 T.I. @Tip USA 3723170
87 234 Kelly Clarkson @kelly_clarkson USA 3706494
88 236 Yoko Ono @yokoono Japan 3690882
89 245 Ricardo Montaner @montanertwiter Argentina 3614485
90 246 Mac Miller @MacMiller USA 3600670
91 249 LL COOL J @llcoolj USA 3590239
92 254 Chayanne @CHAYANNEMUSIC Puerto Rico 3531081
93 257 Ne-Yo @NeYoCompound USA 3512828
94 258 J. Cole @JColeNC USA 3512091
95 262 Juan Luis Guerra @JuanLuisGuerra Dominican Republic 3474002
96 264 Miranda Cosgrove @MirandaCosgrove USA 3447970
97 267 Enrique Iglesias @enrique305 Spain 3421631
98 271 Ciara @ciara USA 3391816
99 274 Siwon Choi @siwon407 South Korea 3377469
100 279 Ke$ha @keshasuxx USA 3328797

Download the data

• DATA: download the full spreadsheet

More data

World government data

• Search the world's government data with our gateway

Development and aid data

• Search the world's global development data with our gateway

Can you do something with this data?

Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group
• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk

• Get the A-Z of data
• More at the Datastore directory

• Follow us on Twitter
• Like us on Facebook

This post is also available in: Français (French)

Top Twitter accounts in the world in 2020

Twitter is the place where we all go to express our opinions on any topic (always trying to do it will respect) and also the place we go to talk to our celebrities. They are the Top Twitter accounts. Twitter is also the place where we get inform on the latest news. In fact, Twitter has grown a lot as a way to get informed and the great news channels are quite popular on Twitter getting a lot of followers who want to be informed. This is also how Twitter trending hashtags are created.

Fans can express their love for their favorite artist latest record. And artists can react to those tweets by replying to it, retweeting it or liking it. Musicians and artists tend to be the most popular accounts on Twitter, let’s go through a list and see the account with the highest amount of followers. Get ready to know who are the most popular Twitter users.

Popular Twitter accounts highlights

In this post we will analyze the popularity on Twitter from two different points of view:

  • Number of followers: this number has been using traditionally to express popularity, however, there are many ways of faking this number: you can buy followers or follow a lot of users to get follow-backs. Nowadays, anyone can find a Twitter follower tracker that helps keeping track of the ups and downs in the number of followers. This is an important number, but not the only one.
  • Economic value: the economic value of one user’s tweet expresses how much that tweet would be in the market. In Tweet Binder we have developed this new influence metric to complete the number of followers, the Top Twitter accounts doesn’t have to have a high number of followers, they can have a high economic value. The higher the economic value the more influence the user will have. It combines a lot of metrics, you can learn more about the economic value of a hashtag or user.

To measure the number of followers we will just use the website of Twitter, you can go there and check the number of followers of these Top Twitter accounts. For the economic value we will use Twego for influencers, a new tool from Tweet Binder’s family. So, if you want to analyze Ellen’s or Katy Perry’s tweets and accounts just keep reading and enjoy!

Top 10 most followed Twitter accounts

2020

The number of followers is the perfect metric to measure if an account is popular or not, but remember that it is not the only one. Most followed Twitter accounts are important, however it is true that followers can be easily bought nowadays so be careful with those account with a lot of followers but little engagement. Most followed on Twitter is like being the richest at Monopoly (Hello Hasbro!). However, there are some accounts that have millions of followers because they have honestly earned them and in the first positions we always find celebrities, so we don’t think they actually bought followers. These are accounts from musicians, soccer players, TV shows and even presidents and ex-presidents, most followed accounts on Twitter are always famous people. We are sure that, a few years ago the bitcoin Twitter community was one of the most followed ones.

We are going to focus on the Top 10 accounts by number of followers (top 10 most followed Twitter accounts):

NameTwitter HandleFollowers*

Barack Obama

@BarackObama112,190,349

Katy Perry

@katyperry108,354,079

Justin Bieber

@justinbieber108,212,210

Rihanna

@rihanna95,508,842

Taylor Swift

@taylorswift1385,540,031

Cristiano Ronaldo

@Cristiano82,190,512

Lady Gaga

@ladygaga80,690,581

Ellen DeGeneres

@TheEllenShow79,335,957

YouTube

@YouTube72,223,496

Donald J Trump

@realDonaldTrump71,275,392

*Info updated the 20th January 2020

It is very common for very popular Twitter accounts to follow a small number of users but here we can see some exceptions to this norm. For example, Barack Obama follows 609,570 users and Justin Bieber follows 300,638 accounts. This is something not very common as it is very difficult to keep track of what that amount of accounts are sharing. Of course, it doesn’t make sense to follow 0 accounts. That is the case of Taylor Swift. We are huge fans of this artist, we have written several posts about Taylor Swift on Twitter, but following zero accounts is not something very recommendable. However, we have to say that she interacts a lot with all her swifties. Not only with her own account but also with the @taylornation13 account as well.

In this case we see that the number of followers and economic market value place the accounts in the same position. We will see after how to even complete this influence formula with the engagement value, be patient.

Analyzing Twitter popular accounts with Tweet Binder

Every gift comes with its responsibilities, being a Top Twitter account too. Having such a big amount of followers makes it necessary to keep track of what they are saying. Those followers might be saying good things about the account in particular but maybe they are saying bad things. That is when Tweet Binder comes in handy. With our reports you can track anything on Twitter. How? Easy peasy lemon squeezy! For these type of actions you can activate two different Twitter types of reports:

  1. Twitter historical report: To track what has been said about the account. ⏪ Twitter Historical Reports!
  2. Twitter real time report: To start analyzing form now on. ⏩ Real Time Twitter Reports!

If you have an army of followers, it is important (not to say mandatory) to have at least some knowledge of what they are saying. Of course, the artist should not read everything being said about them on Twitter. Users tend to be kind of cruel when expressing their opinions and this can negatively affect the artist. This is the duty of the account managers. They are the ones who should keep track of what is being said.

Mentions to @BarackObama – January 2020

As Barack Obama is the most popular account on Twitter, we are going to see how many mentions she has received during January 2020. In order to run this report, we have created a Twitter historical report. This analysis will give back the tweets sent mentioning @BarackObama during the first days of January 2020.

The first thing we see after creating a Twitter analytics report with Tweet Binder is the section with the general stats. We know that the difference between impacts and reach can sometimes be tricky, that is why we have written several posts about it. You can learn more about those metrics in this blog and know what Twitter impressions and tweetreach are. Let’s analyze these numbers more closely. During the month of January, @barackobama has generated:

  • 339,289 total tweets. These tweets are classified in 228,997 original tweets and 110,392 retweets.
  • 2,080,912,450 potential impacts
  • 690,598,209 potential reach
  • 181,011 contributors

With Tweet Binder reports the user does not only get general stats but also rankings of users. These rankings are perfect to know which kind of users are tweeting content about the analyzed account. In the case of Barack Obama, we could use these reports to find out his supporters or, even, haters.

The upper rankings show the most active users. It is important to differentiate between the users who sent original content and those who retweets what other users have said. From our perspective, those who send more original content are the true fans. We have a deeper analysis and post about how Obama uses Twitter and the mentions he receives.

Most Followed Twitter Accounts By Country

Most mentioned users along with @barackobama

Another clever thing to do when analyzing these accounts is to see which other accounts are mentioned along with this artist. The artist will be the most followed Twitter account for sure, however the mentions will unveil some popular Twitter accounts as well. This way, you can discover which people users relate with the analyzed one. In the case of @barackobama, these are the other popular accounts that are mentioned with her:

AccountMentions
@michelleobama51,089
@realdonaldtrump22,264
@speakerpelosi
10,449
9,209
@whitehouse7,157
@olivermcgee
@hillaryclinton
5,656
5,390
@johnkerry2,331

Real top Twitter accounts – Top 10

Ok, here we go, we are going to get a bit controversial, we like trouble sometimes. Who is the most important account in Twitter? For us it will be the account who generates the highest engagement. Engagement in Twitter is:

Most Followed Twitter Accounts
  • Mentions
  • Retweets
  • Likes
Accounts

If a Twitter account gets 1 million followers but no retweets or likes that will look suspicious to say the least. We have developed a new formula that completes the afore mentioned market economic value, it is called: the Twitter engagement value and it is just perfect to analyze the real value of the most followed accounts on Twitter. It is also expressed in money (US Dollars) and the higher the better. However there is a little comment here, let us ask you a question: would you be “happy” if you get 100 retweets to one of your tweets? We are sure that you would. Now, ask the same question to Katy Perry, 100 retweets in a tweet from Katy seems little, right? So, to calculate the engagement value we have had that in consideration: 100 retweets for your tweet are ok, 100 retweets for Katy’s tweets are not ok.

If the engagement value is lower than the economic value, it will mean that the account has less engagement than expected.

Let’s review the top 10 most followed Twitter accounts and let’s add the engagement value:

NameTwitter HandleFollowers*Economic valueEngagement value
Barack Obama@BarackObama112,190,349$146,801.03$1,718,198.126
Katy Perry@katyperry108,354,079$141,833.44$78,783.152
Justin Bieber@justinbieber108,212,210$144,175.85$605,131.568
Rihanna@rihanna95,509,301$126,344.42$806,308.492
Taylor Swift@taylorswift1385,540,231$114,467.81$744,352.816
Cristiano Ronaldo@Cristiano82,190,512$110,221$867,066.133
Lady Gaga@ladygaga80,690,581$111,764.72$521,484.36
Ellen DeGeneres@TheEllenShow79,335,957$110,053.83$36,692.69
YouTube@YouTube72,223,496$101,526.84$66,299.22
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump71,277,043$93,553.67$670,081.35

Isn’t it amazing?! We have a few accounts that are getting a HUGE ton of engagement, specially Justin Bieber and Barack Obama. Their engagement value is more than 10 times higher than the market value. That means that they are getting a lot more engagement than expected by our algorithm. On the other hand, there are two accounts that have lower engagement values: Youtube, Katy and Ellen (we love you Ellen, it’s ok). So if you want to check the real influence of someone at Twitter check Twego and compare the engagement value with the market value.

The real influence metric would be the relation between the engagement value and the economic value. If higher than 1 then it is positive, if less than 1 it will mean the engagement of that account is low and should be higher.

Most Followed Twitter Accounts In World

Analyzing popular Twitter accounts

As you can see, keeping track of popular accounts on Twitter is very easy with Tweet Binder. You can track the most followed Twitter accounts quite fast. In less than five minutes you can know everything that is being said about any account. We have run this example with @barackobama, the most popular account on Twitter by number of followers. Do you need to get stats from a different account? What are you waiting for?

Looking for top tweets

Tweeting is all about expressing your opinion, we know that. But it is also important to impact as many people as possible. That is why when someone sends a tweet the main thing he is looking forward is to someone clicking on RT or Like. Popular accounts on Twitter get much impact and the Top Twitter accounts are always getting a lot of engagement. Marketing campaigns aim nowadays to being viral, that’s at least something the social media managers wish for. We are living the era of the viral phenomenon and top tweets are part of that. A top tweet is not a tweet sent by a popular person or a top Twitter accounts, it is just a tweet that got a unexpected engagement: retweets and likes mostly.

Actually, the culture of influencers is partly based on this. When an influencer sends a post, he knows that it is going to be seen by hundreds of thousands of people, at least that’s what they told us. In some way this can be considered as viral. So, how can marketing managers detect the top tweets that have been sent during their campaign? With Tweet Binder this is very easy! The Twitter advanced search will help you finding those tweets.

Twitter advanced search with Tweet Binder

Tweet Binder allows you to use the Twitter advanced search from our homepage and in the top search box in the dashboard. We have talked about Twitter advanced search many times and now we will use it to find the right content. With just one click you can seek for only pics or just RTs, for example. You can also sort tweets by language or by date. Let’s see some examples before we start looking for Top tweets:

Tweets by dates:

Top 25 Most Followed Twitter Accounts

  • #Brexit since:2020-01-01
  • @realdonaldtrump until:2020-01-01
  • “Social Media” since:2019-01-01 until:2020-01-20

By language:

  • English – #NBAFinals lang:en
  • Spanish – #NBAFinals lang:es
  • Italian – #NBAFinals lang:it
  • French – #NBAFinals lang:fr

As you can see, Tweet Binder can helping you to run a very deep analysis on your hashtag, term or keyword. But, as this information is really valuable this does not help you detecting top tweets within a campaign. Reports created from our homepage give back up to 500 tweets from the last 7 days. Those are the free reports, if you are a PRO user these reports give up to 10,000 tweets or 140,000 depending on your plan. These commands can be used in any type of campaign you are running on Twitter. For example, they come in very handy for Twitter chats as they will help to detect relevant tweets sent during the tweetchat.

Conclusion

Everyone is on Twitter in one way or another and we always follow one of those Top Twitter accounts. You can have you own personal account or you can have a fake one just to scroll up and down and read tweets. No one escapes from the blue bird Social Network, whose name is Larry by the way. Thanks to Twitter, artists and fans have a place where they can get closer.

By typing that in the search box we will generate a report of the last 7 days containing only tweets that have had at least 1,000 retweets. On the advanced report or in the classify panel, the user can read those tweets. This is a very fast way of detecting not only top tweets but also influential users. As these reports can later be exported to an excel document the user obtains the complete list of contributors that have sent those tweets.

Table of Contents

Most Followed Twitter Accounts In South Africa

  • 1 Top Twitter accounts in the world in 2020
  • 2 Top 10 most followed Twitter accounts
  • 3 Analyzing Twitter popular accounts with Tweet Binder
  • 6 Looking for top tweets




Coments are closed