Elon Musk Passes 200 Million Followers On X: Here's The Top 10 Accounts And Where Barack Obama, Donald Trump And Taylor Swift Rank

Billionaire Elon Musk passed an impressive milestone on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion in 2022.

What Happened: Musk now has over 200 million followers on X, hitting the impressive milestone on Oct. 3, 2024. The latest milestone takes Musk significantly ahead of the next most followed account, which is former President Barack Obama, who he passed in March 2023 to become the most followed person on the platform.

Here's a look at the current most-followed accounts on X as of Oct. 3, 2024:

1. Elon Musk: 200 million
2. Barack Obama: 131.9 million
3. Cristiano Ronaldo: 113.2 million
4. Justin Bieber: 110.3 million
5. Rihanna: 108.4 million
6. Katy Perry: 106.1 million
7. Narendra Modi: 102.5 million
8. Taylor Swift: 95.2 million
9. Donald Trump: 91.3 million
10. Lady Gaga: 83 million

Ranking outside of the top 10 are the accounts of NASA (82.9 million) and YouTube (79.7 million) at 11^th and 12^th respectively.

Musk passed the milestone as the most-followed account in March 2023. The top 10 most-followed accounts at the time included:

1. Elon Musk
2. Barack Obama
3. Justin Bieber
4. Katy Perry
5. Cristiano Ronaldo
6. Taylor Swift
7. Donald Trump
8. Narendra Modi
9. Ariana Grande
10. Lady Gaga

The latest list update shows the top two accounts the same, with Bieber dropping from third to fourth and Ronaldo moving up from fifth to third place. Perry, Swift and Trump each fell two places in the top 10. Grande fell out of the top 10 and Rihanna was the newcomer to the top 10.

Did You Know?

• Congress Is Making Huge Investments. Get Tips On What They Bought And Sold Ahead Of The 2024 Election With Our Easy-to-Use Tool

Instagram Top 10

The top-10 follower counts on X are significantly different from the top-followed accounts on the social media platform Instagram, which is owned by Meta Platforms META.

Among the top 10 most-followed people on Instagram as of Oct. 3, 2024 are:

1. Cristiano Ronaldo: 639 million
2. Lionel Messi: 504 million
3. Selena Gomez: 424 million
4. Kylie Jenner: 397 million
5. The Rock (Dwayne Johnson): 395 million
6. Ariana Grande: 376 million
7. Kim Kardashian: 360 million
8. Beyonce: 310 million
9. Khloe Kardashian: 306 million
10. Justin Bieber: 294 million

A look at the top 10 from Instagram shows that they all rank ahead of Musk's follower count on X. Ronaldo and Bieber are the only people to appear in both the top 10 of X and Instagram for followers.

Musk admitted in an interview to having a secret Instagram account after saying he got rid of his public Instagram.

"Instagram, man – it's a thirst trap, you know," Musk said.

Musk has also spoken out against social media platform Facebook, where he removed the profile pages of Tesla and SpaceX.

In the battle of social media platforms, Musk also said that "Instagram makes people depressed & Twitter makes people angry" and asked followers which of the two was better.

The Rise of Musk on Twitter

Someone set up a Twitter account with the @elonmusk moniker in June 2009. Musk claims it wasn’t him.

"Please ignore prior tweets, as that was someone pretending to be me 🙂 This is actually me," Musk tweeted on June 4, 2010.

Please ignore prior tweets, as that was someone pretending to be me 🙂 This is actually me.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2010

Musk has seen his Twitter following grow substantially over the last year. At the beginning of 2022, Musk had 72.1 million followers.

In June 2022, Musk passed the 100 million following milestone.

Musk's rise on Twitter also bolstered the followings of the companies he leads. Those companies sometimes serve as a way to communicate news to the public instead of using press releases. Musk often tweets major announcements from Tesla and SpaceX, which are then seen by millions of people around the world.

Stats from SocialBlade show Musk has averaged gaining 119,295 followers daily over the last 14 days. Musk follows 771 accounts on X. Musk followed just 184 accounts, in March 2023. Musk has averaged following one new account a day over the last 14 days.

Musk has averaged 86 tweets per day over the last 14 days, which includes retweets and replies.

Read Next:

• Elon Musk Bought X For $44B, Now Fidelity Values Social Media Network Below $10B

Image: Shutterstock