Elon Musk becomes the most-followed Twitter user, overtaking Barack Obama

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has surpassed former US president Barack Obama as the most followed account on Twitter, five months after he bought the platform in a tumultuous takeover.

The Guinness World Records noted in its report that Musk has gained over 133 million followers on Twitter, five months after taking over the microblogging site for $44 billion. The 51-year-old Obama has held the record since 2020.

“Twitter has approximately 450 million monthly active users, meaning around 30 per cent follow Musk,” the report said.

Data tracker Social Blade revealed that Obama and Canadian singer Justin Bieber lost over 2,68,585 and 1,18,950 followers in the last 30 days.

The founder of Tesla and SpaceX on Thursday had 133,084,560 Twitter followers, a nose ahead of Obama, who had 133,041,813.

Elon Musk has encouraged users to communicate more freely on Twitter and said the site would impose the least amount of censorship allowed by law.

The platform said that starting on April 1, the trust-building 'blue tick' for certain individual accounts such as celebrities or journalists would be rolled back and reserved for paying subscribers.

Elon Musk's net worth has increased to $190 billion, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List. However, Musk has not yet recovered the title of world’s richest man, having lost it to Bernard Arnault, owner of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH.