Elon Musk becomes most followed person on Twitter, the platform he bought for $44 billion

The Twitter acquisition has helped its CEO Elon Musk become the world's most followed person on the platform, as the Chief Twit on Thursday dethroned former US President Barack Obama as the most followed person on Twitter.

The billionaire who bought Twitter for $44 billion last year now has 133,068,709 followers, compared to Obama's 133,042,819, according to the follower counts. Top celebrities like Justin Bieber with over 113 million Twitter followers and Katy Perry with over 108 million followers are at the third and fourth most-followed spots, respectively.

Musk reached the 100 million followers-mark in June last year and since then, there has been a meteoric rise in his popularity.

While Obama hardly tweets, especially promoting a key social cause or highlighting his work as the US President, Musk keeps tweeting left, right and centre on nearly all the topics that trend in the world.

Musk in February said he was making his Twitter account private to see if it improves reach.

"Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you can see my private tweets more than my public ones," he posted.

This meant the only people able to see the billionaire's tweets were his followers and no one was able to retweet Musk's tweets either.

It came amid complaints from users that their tweets were not being seen by as many people as they used to.

Musk later removed the private setting from his account.