Elon Musk becomes first to reach 200 million followers on X

Elon Musk, the Tesla chief and Space X owner, marked a significant milestone on October 3, emerging as the first individual on the social media platform X to record 200 million followers. Two years ago this month, the tech billionaire paid a whopping $44 billion in Twitter to acquire the microblogging platform.
Currently, former US President Barack Obama is second behind Elon Musk with a following of 131.9 million as on October 4. However, some media reports suggest that the majority of Elon Musk’s supporters “are fake and the count is bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts.”
Obama, the 44th US President, was the first African-American president in US history and is second on the list of influential people with an overwhelming following on X.
Meanwhile, Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, who follows the tech billionaire Elon Musk, trails behind Barack Obama with a following of 113.2 million. Canadian singer Justin Bieber ranks fourth with 110.3 million followers. Barbadian singer and businesswoman Rihanna ranks fifth with a following of 108.4 million. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also occupies a noteworthy position with 102.4 million followers worldwide.
According to recent data about the usage on X in third quarter of this year, spanning July 1 till September 30, it was found that daily user-second grew by 12 per cent year over year to 363.6 billion. At the same time, monthly active users grew by 2 per cent year-on-year to 547.9 million. Furthermore, daily video views surged by 43 per cent year-on-year to 8.9 billion.
The social media platform caters to around 300 million daily active users (DAUs) and more than 600 million monthly active users (MAUs), according to previous statements made by Elon Musk. According to media reports, Elon Musk wants to turn it into an ‘everything app’ that allows users to upload films and TV series and send and receive money digitally.