Pop music diva Lady Gaga is the first to ever reach 10 million followers on Twitter, as confirmed by the Lady’s account and by the official Twitter team. Gaga showed her appreciation with a love-filled tweet over the weekend directed right at her followers (“monsters,” in Gaga-speak).
Since 2009, when Twitter says Ashton Kutcher and CNN were racing to a million followers, things have changed quite a bit. Trailing Gaga most closely is teen pop sensation Justin Bieber, with 9.6 million followers. Filling out the rest of the top five are Barack Obama (8.0 million), Britney Spears (7.8 million) and Kim Kardashian (7.4 million).
(Ranking is based on data from Twitaholic.)
Meanwhile, Ashton Kutcher and CNN Breaking News have fallen a bit behind, with 6.7 million (ranked seventh) and 2.1 million followers (ranked 20th), respectively.
GagaVille
Twitter isn’t the only place where Lady Gaga is strutting her social media stuff.
While this latest milestone is demonstrative of the microblogging site’s steady growth, it has also served to further illustrate the divide between Twitter and Facebook, still seen as two of the most popular social media sites on the Web. While Gaga has only just reached 10 million followers on Twitter, she’s already been liked over 34 million times on Facebook.
Also on the Facebook platform, Zynga announced last week that it has partnered with the star to create GagaVille, a neighboring farm to FarmVille populated with unicorns, crystals and other typical monster-fare. When GagaVille launches tomorrow, May 17, visitors to the farm will be treated with a sneak peek into unreleased songs from Born This Way, the new Gaga album landing on May 23.
Additionally, if you buy a $25 Zynga game card at Best Buy this week, you can download the new album for free.
As a tie-in with another Zynga game, Words With Friends, Lady Gaga has launched a “Words With Gaga” contest. Every day, her Facebook page will publish a new “Gaga word of the day.” When a user playing the game plays that word, he or she will be automatically entered in a contest for Gaga concert tickets and a signed copy of Born This Way.
Finally, RewardVille is now featuring limited edition Lady Gaga virtual goods.
