The ladies of U.S. pop
music and pop culture are commanding the most followers among the 400
million-plus global users of Instagram, the photo-sharing app said Tuesday as
it celebrated its fifth birthday.
Facebook Inc-owned
Instagram confirmed its top five accounts for the first time, with 25-year-old
pop singer Taylor Swift leading the pack with 49.6 million users.
Reality star Kim
Kardashian, 34, boasts 48.1 million followers and R&B singer Beyonce, also
34, commands 47.2 million fans. Pop singers Selena Gomez, 23, and Ariana
Grande, 22, have garnered 45.9 million and 44.6 million fans respectively.
“The type of content
we see from these people is authentic and often times really fun,” said Charles
Porch, head of global creative programs at Instagram, citing Swift’s penchant
for cat videos and Beyonce’s recent glimpse into her vacation.
“It’s a view people
haven’t really had before, especially in real time,” he said.
To compare, U.S.
president Barack Obama has 4.7 million Instagram followers. Instagram
discounted its own account, which is followed by 103 million users.
Instagram has racked
up more than 400 million global users as it turns five, with 75 percent coming
from outside the United States, the company said last month. The average time a
user spends on the app is 21 minutes a day.
The top five ladies of
Instagram are mostly popular with a younger audience, with 85 percent of each
of their fanbases aged under 34, the audience coveted by advertisers which
Instagram hopes to draw more of by the end of the year.
Singer and actress
Gomez, who often comments on posts and responds to fans directly, has the most
engaged account, Instagram said.
The top accounts also
each reflect a 75 percent international fanbase – Grammy-winning Swift’s
second-biggest number of Instagram followers comes from Indonesia, Kardashian’s
in Britain, Beyonce and Gomez’s in Brazil and Grande’s in Mexico.
Swift’s most-liked
photos include one with her musician boyfriend Calvin Harris and another with
flowers she received from rapper Kanye West, both garnering 2.5 million likes.
Kardashian, often
dubbed ‘queen of the selfie,’ offers a look into her fashion and beauty
regimes. The elusive Beyonce uses Instagram as her main method of communication
since unofficially retiring from doing direct interviews.
Courtesy of Reuters,
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