Justin Bieber Ousted As Twitter Overlord, ‘As Long As (Half of You) Follow Me?’

Justin Bieber’s reign as the most followed person on Twitter has come to a swift and deplorably unceremonious end.

The 19-year-old’s 37 million plus followers on the social media site have been brutally slashed without warning, even though his account still reads the same.

As it turns out, Socialbakers, a company that studies and analyzes social media metrics, has estimated that almost half of Bieber’s Twitter followers are either fake (around 16.7 million) or inactive (2.6 million).

Taking out the ‘egg’ accounts, spam tweeters, the rarely or never tweeted users, and the “Boyfriend” singer is left with 17.8 million “good” and true ‘beliebers.’

This, of course, now means former record holder Lady Gaga monsters back to her Queen of Twitter position with 19 million “real” followers.

As yet, there’s no been public announcement from Bieber on the terrible news and there may not be any, what with his newly adopted ‘Jay-Z silent stance‘ on responding to speculation.

For that matter has anyone actually tested Socialbaker’s analysis? And do we even know if Twitter plan on revising the singer’s account? We need answers!

But there’s no getting around it, this is not a good ‘look’ for the Biebs. Try as one might, there’s no spin or Pollyanna-ism that can make the bitter pill of Twitter demotion easier to swallow.

Oh, wait here’s a couple. No-one’s (yet) suggesting that the pop star knew any of his followers were fake, and a quick scan of timelines doesn’t reveal any undue concern by ‘Beliebers’ about their relegation. So there is that.

An interesting perspective on Bieber’s follower culling came via a Canadian outlet, who wrote:

“When compared to his two closest Twitter number rivals (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry), Bieber has achieved so little commercial success that the mere fact that he even has 17.8 million ‘real’ followers mean he’s already won the popularity war … or to put in the parlance of the kids, he’s got more Swag than the POTUS.”

But jesting aside. The teen phenom remains one of the world’s first social media superstar’s to show just how far connecting with fans can be taken, and lets face it, 17.8 million is fantastic numbers.

Who knows, Bieber could be planning his Twitter coup even now? Never say never.

[Image via Featureflash / Shutterstock.com ]