A Japanese billionaire’s tweet is now the world’s most tweeted, after he offered retweeters the chance to win 100 million yen (£725,000).
What it means: Yusaku Maezawa, a billionaire businessman who is due to be the first moon tourist (assuming Elon Musk can figure out how to get a rocket there) has written the world’s most retweeted tweet. The tweet, which promises to share £725,000 amongst 100 randomly selected retweeters, has been tweeted more than 4 million times. (Almost as many times as we just said the word ‘tweet’.) That beats the 3.5 million retweets a dude got when he asked fast food shop Wendy’s how many retweets he needed to get a year’s worth of free chicken nuggets (they said 18 million).
How many retweets a tweet gets may seem kinda silly, but it can actually have big consequences (and we’re not just talking about the potential for free nuggets). Exhibit A: when Kardashian Kylie Jenner tweeted that she didn’t use Snapchat anymore, the company’s value went down by $1.3 billion. People who had invested money in Snapchat pulled their money out, figuring that Kylie was enough of a trendsetter that if she was over Snapchat, most of its app users were too. So it’s worth noting that Yusaku Maezawa’s tweet referenced his online clothing website Zozotown, which millions more potential customers have now seen, heard of, or been reminded of.
Read our explainer on consumer choice theory.
