Lady Gaga may have once ruled the Twitterverse, but a new queen of the micro-blogging site emerged over the course of 2013.
Thanks to her latest album Prism , a string of extremely popular singles, and a very public romance with fellow musician John Mayer, a lot of people decided to follow the singer this year. MTV News reports that Perry added over 15 million fans to her flock, pushing her total to approximately 48 million.
Of course, Lady Gaga isn’t doing too poorly in the followers department either. As of this writing, Mother Monster has around 40 million people following everything she says on Twitter. The “Applause” singer added approximately 7.8 million new fans to her micro-blogging coffer this year.
Katy Perry and Lady Gaga aren’t the only famous singers who ruled Twitter during 2013. According to Rolling Stone , Justin Bieber came dangerously close to knocking Perry off her throne. The singer, who debuts his new documentary Believe on December 25, presently has approximately 47.7 followers on the site.
While Lady Gaga and her ilk may have a massive amount of followers, the One Direction boys currently hold the crown for the most pop music-oriented retweets in 2013. Four out of the top five tweets belonged to the beloved British group, though singer Niall Horan took home the micro-blogging crown on his 20th birthday.
Yesss! I’m 20! Wohooo! No more teens!
— Niall Horan (@NiallOfficial) September 12, 2013
Although a lot of folks enjoyed retweeting One Direction-oriented posts this year, one of the most popular and perhaps most amusing retweets started with Drake Bell. Shortly after Kim Kardashian and Kanye West unveiled their baby’s unusual name, he popped off the post you see below. Even if you couldn’t care less about North West, it’s still pretty funny.
In honor of Kim and Kanye’s baby “North West” I will be naming my first son “Taco”
— Drake Bell (@DrakeBell) June 23, 2013
Unfortunately for Lady Gaga, she landed in the proverbial hot seat towards the end of summer when she encouraged her legion of Twitter followers to purchase multiple copies of her single “Applause” in hopes of pushing the track higher in the charts. Since Billboard counts multiple purchases, many people believed this was definitely a little shady.
To encourage people to spend money on the same song several times, the most dedicated fans were reportedly promised a trip to London and an opportunity to meet Lady Gaga in person. When one fan complained about not having the money to buy the song multiple times, the singer attempted to calm the waters by declaring that “Radio request, creative videos and ‘Applauses’ hashtags count too!” However, the damage was already done.
Are you surprised that Katy Perry has more than Lady Gaga on Twitter?