Elon Musk dethrones Barack Obama in the number of subscribers on Twitter

UPDATE DAY

Twitter majority shareholder and CEO Elon Musk is now the platform's most-followered personality, after dethroning former US President Barack Obama.

Thursday, the he entrepreneur was followed by 133.08 million subscribers, compared to 133.04 for the former head of state.

 In one year, since the announcement of his takeover offer for Twitter, Elon Musk has gained more than 50 million subscribers.

In February, the Platformer news site reported that the hotheaded billionaire had pushed Twitter engineers to put in place measures to promote the distribution of his messages on the network.

Under pressure from their boss, these employees modified recommendation filters and mechanically widened the spread of his tweets, still according to Platformer.

Elon Musk and Barack Obama are far ahead of singers Justin Bieber (113 million subscribers), Katy Perry (108) and Rihanna (108), who complete the top 5, according to data from the specialized site Social Blade.

Twitter announced that all users who received a blue badge, synonymous with certification, but did not subscribe to the new paid subscription Twitter Blue would lose it as of Saturday, April 1.

In an internal message to company employees, Elon Musk said last week that he estimated Twitter's value at $20 billion, less than the half of the 44 billion he spent in October to take control of the San Francisco group.