Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast, he of viral YouTube fame, has become the first person to hit a million followers on Instagram Threads. The brand new social media app, launched by Meta as a rival to Twitter, has already amassed more than 44 million users since its launch a little over 24 hours ago. Of these 44 million Threads users, a million follow MrBeast.
The 25-year-old YouTuber reached a million followers at 9.42 am EST on July 6 – just a few hours after joining the app. Being the first individual to reach this milestone has earned MrBeast a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
A video from Guinness World Records shows the exact moment that MrBeast’s 999K Threads followers turned to 1 million. But when the record-keeping company tweeted the video, MrBeast responded: “Shhhhh, don’t let the twitter police know I’m cheating on them.”
MrBeast’s bio on Threads reads: “Future Threads CEO”, and he earned a following of 1 million after posting just three times.
Threads, a text-based app built by Meta to rival Twitter, became available Wednesday night to users in more than 100 countries – including the US, India, Britain, Japan and Australia.
New arrivals to the platform include celebrities like Oprah, pop star Shakira and chef Gordon Ramsay.
Threads, which Meta says provides "a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations," arrives at a time when many are looking for Twitter alternatives to escape Elon Musk's raucous oversight of the platform since acquiring it last year for $44 billion. But Meta's new app has also raised data privacy concerns, and is notably unavailable in the European Union.
(With inputs from the Associated Press)
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