Katy Perry Becomes First Twitter User With 50 Million Followers

Justin Bieber’s reign has come to an end. Katy Perry now enjoys the highest number of followers on Twitter.

With more than 50 million unique accounts following her every word, Perry has edged out all competition; both in the music industry and beyond. Her closest contender, Bieber, trails behind with 49 million, and even Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga can’t match her star power; both of them lounging around with 38 million and 41 million, respectively. Even Barack Obama only has 41 million!

Talk about a free country!

“Eh, regular day at the office,” Perry wrote after the news broke. She showed her appreciation, however, by tweeting the stat and calling everyone her “Katy cats.”

Despite her glibness, the number one position on Twitter isn’t an easy thing to hold. Late last year, Perry and Bieber had an intense battle over who would be the first to crack 47 million, with Perry briefly overtaking him at 46.48 million while he took second place with 46.47 million.

Bieber regained the top spot in the new year, but Perry’s fans struck back; some of them even creating empty accounts just to give the “Dark Horse” singer a boost. Before you judge, they aren’t the only social media users to have ever done such a thing: Facebook recently estimated that anywhere from five to eleven percent of their accounts are fake.

While Perry has yet to acknowledge the shady tactics that led to her domination as the Queen of Twitter, she did raise eyebrows just last week when she welcomed her ex, John Mayer, back to the site.

Mayer famously hung up his tweets in 2012, saying goodbye to his followers with a simple update that read, “What does this button do?” He later explained his exodus as something he had to do out of self-preservation.

“I was a tweetaholic,” he confessed. “I had four million Twitter followers, and I was always writing on it.”

He further elaborated, “It started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller.”

Perry seems to have no trouble juggling work and social media, and 50 million is certainly a lot larger than four million. She does have the benefit of practice, however. And she probably appreciates the publicity with her World Tour set to begin in May 2014.

What do you think, Katy cats? Should empty Twitter accounts be included in the rankings? What would you do with 50 million followers?