Cristiano Ronaldo broke a new record: He is now the most followed person on the Internet

Social media expert Paolo Pescatore told the BBC it was a "staggering number".

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Photo: Reuters
Photo: Reuters
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

After numerous records in the world of football, one of the best players in history, Cristiano Ronaldo, also broke one in the world of social networks - the first in history to reach a total of one billion followers.

That's how many he has when you add up his followers on Instagram, Facebook, Ix (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and the Chinese social networks Weibo and Kuaishou.

This does not mean a billion separate people, because many follow him on multiple platforms at the same time, and there are also a lot of fake accounts, that is, bots.

Regardless, social media expert Paolo Pescatore tells the BBC it's a "staggering number".

"An incredible achievement, which further highlights a fundamental change in the media."

Ronaldo points out, shows "the power to reach a new, younger audience, thanks to technology".

On the field, the Portuguese is known for his rivalry with Argentine star Lionel Messi, but on the Internet, the two are not in the same category - Messi has "only" 623 million followers.

Celebrities with a large number of followers include singer and actress Selena Gomez (690 million), singer Justin Bieber (607 million) and singer Taylor Swift (574 million).

There is also Dwayne Johnson with 557 million, as well as singer Ariana Grande with 508 million.

Mister Bist (MrBeast), the most popular YouTuber in the world, has a total of 543 million followers.

put up to a billion

A big contribution to Ronaldo's number of one billion followers came from the recently opened YouTube channel, where 50 million people followed in seven days.

During that time, Messi's YouTube channel has only 3,5 million followers, although he has been uploading videos there since 2011.

One of the reasons for this is an important rule in the Internet world: Content is king.

Only one half-minute long video has been published on Messi's channel in the last three years, and the other videos are similar and short.

He usually speaks in Spanish on them.


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During this time, Ronaldo's channel mainly consists of conversations between him and his wife Georgina Rodriguez, as well as former Manchester United teammate Rio Ferdinand.

And all that content is in English, or at least has an English translation.

Taking that into account, as well as uploading new content daily, it's clear that Ronaldo (or more likely his social media team) knows exactly what he's doing on YouTube.

During his career he also often broke records.

He is the top scorer in the history of the Champions League, has the most goals in the history of the European Championships, as well as the most international matches than anyone else.

Last week he became the first footballer to score 900 goals in his career.

However, there is still room for improvement on social networks - it is not yet on TikTok, a network especially popular among young people, nor on Threads.

All those accounts will only further contribute to his dominance in the field of earnings.

According to Forbes, he has earned 260 million dollars so far in his career - the most of all athletes.


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