MANILA, Philippines — K-pop sensation BTS this week overtook One Direction's record as the most-followed band worldwide on social media platform Twitter.
The official BTS Twitter account (@BTS_twt) has amassed 31.52 million followers, edging out One Direction's (@onedirection) 31.51 million followers.
This is on top of the Korean boy group’s official promotional account’s (@bts_bighit) 26 million followers.
According to Twitter Data, BTS was the most-tweeted musician on the platform this year, beating out the likes of Kanye West, Beyoncé and Rihanna.
In a year of so much change, it's nice to see a few things remain constant.... like BTS dominating the most-Tweeted musicians list ????
— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) December 7, 2020
1??@BTS_twt
2??@KanyeWest
3??@Beyonce
4??@Rihanna
5??@justinbieber
6??@iamcardib
7??@BLACKPINK
8??@Drake
9??@ArianaGrande
????@taylorswift13
BTS is also the most mentioned K-pop artist in every market except for Thailand.
Which of these top 10 most mentioned artists worldwide do you stan? #KpopTwitter pic.twitter.com/EZ4vhaK6Oi
— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) September 22, 2020
One Direction, however, has been on indefinite hiatus since 2016. Their Twitter page’s last posts were back in July to celebrate the band’s 10th anniversary.
Regardless, the boys of One Direction, excluding former member Zayn, all have a higher follower count on their individual Twitter accounts: Niall Horan (@NiallOfficial) with 40.8 million, Harry Styles (@Harry_Styles) with 36 million, Louis Tomlinson (@Louis_Tomlinson) with 35.1 million and Liam Payne (@LiamPayne) with 34.3 million.