MrBeast has made history as the first person to reach 1 million followers on Threads.
The brand-new social media app – a text-based conversation tool to rival Twitter – went live on 5 July.
It took the YouTuber, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, just a matter of hours to amass the impressive following.
He reached the milestone at 2:42 p.m. (BST) / 9:42 a.m. (EST) on 6 July.
And when he learned of his record-breaking achievement, MrBeast tweeted us to say: “Shhhhh, don’t let the twitter police know I’m cheating on them”.
While technically his wasn’t the first account to reach the number, the others belonged to organisations like Instagram and National Geographic.
MrBeast’s bio on Threads reads: “Future Threads CEO”, and he earned a following of 1 million after posting just three times.
His first post, shortly after the app went live, read: “Soooooo, how long until we’re also addicted to this app? Lol”.
He also invited his fans to like a post if they thought Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg should make him the app’s CEO.
MrBeast also cheekily joked: “I feel like I’m cheating on Twitter by using this app”.
Meta app Threads was pitched as a “friendly” alternative to Twitter, which has hit a few speed bumps ever since it was taken over by Space-X billionaire Elon Musk.
Like Twitter, users can publish posts including links, photos and videos, and others can like, reply and share them with their own followers.
Posts are limited to a maximum of 500 characters. And to make things easier for new users, people can sign in through Instagram, import their profile pictures and bios from the photo-sharing app, and even follow everyone they already follow on Instagram with the click of a button.
Threads is said to have quickly attracted more than 10 million users from its pool of the 2 billion Instagram accounts in existence.
Zuckerberg, who was the second person to reach 1 million Threads followers, wrote in a post: “The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands. I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success.
@guinnessworldrecords First person to reach one million followers on Threads ? @MrBeast #threads#mrbeast#instagram#socialmedia♬ original sound – Guinness World Records
“That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently.”
MrBeast, who is credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that centre on expensive stunts and challenges, has a huge following across all of his social media channels.
38.5 million people follow him on Instagram and he has 165 million YouTube subscribers.
MrBeast holds a few other Guinness World Records titles, including highest-earning YouTube contributor (current) with a reported $54 m (£40 m) in 2021 and most subscribers for an individual male on YouTube.
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