This Is The Most Influential Person On Twitter (And It's Not Trump)

He'll just have to shake it off.

Twitter’s long been the bastion of global discussions, sparking huge conversations with breaking news, silly memes and candid celebrity thoughts (some hilarious and amazing, others Kanye West). Well it turns out there’s a few big names on the platform that wield the most influence over the Twittersphere and new research by a company called Brandwatch revealed who was queen of the social media platform’s hearts this year. We’ve already given it away slightly, but yes - it turns out a female celeb was the most influential, so congratulations are in order for Taylor Swift.

The study looked at ‘a selection of criteria that added together to create [a celeb’s] influence score’, which took into account things like ‘followers, retweets and replies’ and ‘genuine engagement’. The named celebrity would also get bonus points depending on how influential the people they were engaging with were, so for instance if Chrissy Teigen and Michelle Obama started having a natter then it would bump their score way up.

Taylor Swift’s account @taylorswift13 came in at first place with the top influencer score of 98 and an eye-watering following of 84 million at the time Brandwatch’s study was published.

Besides being the most influential female celeb, she was the most popular of 2018 tailed closely by Liam Payne (yes, really) at 97.

Liam Payne, whose account @liampayne had a following of 33 million at the time of the study, actually responded to the news - on Twitter, obviously. He screenshotted the research and said, ‘Wow can’t quite believe this. Couldn’t have done it without you....thanks for listening.’

Following closely behind Taylor Swift and Liam Payne were Katy Perry, Kim Kardashian West, Demi Lovato and President Donald J. Trump who shared the same influencer score: 96. Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama slid in neatly behind him with a score of 95 alongside Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber, Cristiano Ronaldo amongst others.

There were a few surprising names we expected to be on the list but weren’t, including Twitter’s unofficial monarch Chrissy Teigen and Kanye West whose controversial tweets about slavery sparked a huge debate.

Women also dominated the game as Brandwatch claimed ‘the women in our lists had a higher influencer score than the men’ and especially female musicians. On the flip side, women on the lists were typically younger than the men on the platform with the average age for women being 36.5, nearly 10 years younger than the men’s influential score of 44.7 years old

Pretty wild stuff, hey? We just wish Brandwatch’s research had honed in on which were the most talked about moments of 2018 as well, as it feels like there have been so many this year. Maybe something to consider for 2019.

Megan is a freelance journalist who covers entertainment and all things lifestyle, with a particular passion for fashion, beauty, travel and Keanu Reeves stories. She has previously worked on staff for titles including Marie Claire UK, CNN Style and The Evening Standard and has written for titles such as Bustle UK, Wallpaper*, Forbes and Hong Kong Tatler. She splits her time between London and her hometown Hong Kong, where she currently lives with the love of her life - an elderly dog named Poppy - and her husband.