Elon Musk becomes Twitter’s most-followed user after spending $44 billion to buy it

Five months after spending $44 billion to buy Twitter, Elon Musk now has the most number of followers on the platform — slightly more than 133 million.

Musk has approximately 40,000 more followers than former U.S. President Barack Obama, Business Insider reports, gaining most of his followers last April after he launched a bid to purchase the social network.

According to reports in the months since the $44 million sale was finalized last October, Musk appears to have funneled resources into boosting his tweets’ visibility on the site.

In February, Platformer reported that Musk, whose tweet about the Super Bowl got less traction than President Joe Biden’s, ordered engineers at the company to work on a system that would push his tweets to the entire website. This week, the newsletter also reported that a group of power users were also benefitting from tweet-boosting on the site.

Next month, Twitter will remove verification for users who do not pay for Twitter Blue, an $8 per month subscription service launched by Musk. That will include legacy verified users like many celebrities and journalists, who were granted their blue check marks because can be easily impersonated.

From April, only Twitter Blue subscribers will receive a checkmark, according to the proposed changes. They’ll also benefit from tweet-boosting, like Musk and the site’s other power users.

Tech journalist Ryan Broderick recently reported in his newsletter Garbage Day that just 0.2% of the site’s users subscribe to Twitter Blue.