Katy Perry, Queen of Twitter, Is First to Hit 50 Million Followers

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Image: Dana Edelson/NBC/Associated Press

By Brian Anthony Hernandez2014-01-31 17:16:10 UTC

Pop star Katy Perry roared her way to 50 million Twitter followers this week, becoming the first user hit the milestone after losing the race to 40 million followers to Justin Bieber in June 2013.

Bieber, who was recently arrested for a DUI in Miami, is close behind with 49.2 million followers.

It's important to note that Twitter doesn't remove fake, spam or inactive accounts when displaying the overall followers tally for users.

A "fake follower check" on StatusPeople.com reports that 34% of Katy Perry's followers are fake, based on data retrieved from her first 50,000 followers, which isn't necessarily a fair assessment. But in November, StatusPeople conducted a deeper dive and discovered 42% of "33,000 followers across her first 1.25 million followers" were fake. Katy Perry isn't the only one facing this issue; at its core, this falls on Twitter's shoulders to fix.

The number of followers on any social network is important to celebrities because they often use the platforms to promote their work — their music, their movies, their TV shows, their brand sponsorships and the charities to which they lend their philanthropic efforts (like Perry's charitable tweets).

The most-followed Twitter users, most of whom are in the music industry, have their fair share of bogus followers, too. Regardless, here are top 10 "most-followed" Twitter users: