Justin Bieber on Twitter

, Justin Bieber's Twitter account (@justinbieber) is the second most popular official celebrity Twitter account, behind that of Lady Gaga. Bieber himself uses hashtags when tweeting and discusses a wide variety of topics. By September 2010, his fans accounted for three percent of all Twitter traffic, amounting to 180 million total page views a month. Bieber related topics were frequently trending topics on the service. Steps were taken by Twitter that resulted in his removal as a continually trending topic.
Twitter has been used as a marketing tool for Bieber related products including his album and his movie. Beyond that, marketers have used Bieber to help push their own brands to Bieber's Twitter audience. Bieber was an early adopter of Instagram, tweeting about it in July 2011. The Twitter reach for Bieber related topics is so large that Bieber's Twitter account one of the single largest nodes for discussion about the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
Bieber has attracted a number of celebrity fans and non-celebrity fans. Ashton Kutcher first learned of Bieber through Twitter. Charlie Sheen accidentally shared his phone number with the world while trying to direct message to Bieber. His fans have engaged in an effort to unseat Lady Gaga as the site's most popular celebrity. He announces his tours, concerts and songs on Twitter, where his fans can usually make topics about him trending.
Introduction
Justin Bieber's official Twitter account is @justinbieber.<ref name="TsvetovatKouznetsov2011 p18" />
Followers and fans
Bieber has one of the largest celebrity Twitter follower counts on the service, and is second only to Lady Gaga,<ref namebiebstwit1/><ref namebiebstwits45/><ref name="SinghDiamond2012"/> though at one point Britney Spears was more popular than him.<ref name="LiBernoff2011" /> He had a number of fans on the service by September 2009.<ref name="Summers2010"/> In April 2010, he had 2 million followers.<ref name="lovenzbiebs"/> On 28 April 2010, he had 2.1 million followers;<ref name="biebstwits32eep"/> in September 2010, over 5 million;<ref namebiebstwits16/> and by November 2010, he had 6 million followers, trailing Lady Gaga by a million.<ref name"biebstwit13"/><ref name="Hombach12"/> That month, he was averaging 24,000 new followers a day.<ref name="Hombach12"/> In February 2011, he had 7 million followers,<ref namebiebstwits18/> and by 1 April 2011, Bieber had 8,500,907 followers, ahead of third place Britney Spears who had 7,289,958 followers.<ref name"Cross2011"/> He cracked the 9 million mark by 24 April 2011.<ref name="bieberlink11"/> By early July, 11 million followers, roughly a million less than Lady Gaga.<ref name="Falsani2011"/><ref name="biebstwit1"/><ref name="tops11million"/> His 14 July total was 11,019,472 followers.<ref nametops11million/> In November 2011, he had 15 million followers.<ref name"AutoGG-3"/> On 29 January 2012, he had 16.5 million followers,<ref namedonateorgan/> having acquired a lot of new followers at the start of the year.<ref name"swellfollowers"/> In mid-March 2012, he had 18 million followers.<ref namebiebstwit5/> On 7 March he had 18.1 million followers.<ref name"AutoGG-4"/> By late March 2012, he had nearly 19 million followers.<ref name="biebstwits45"/><ref namebiebstwit8/> On 3 April 2012, he had 18.5 million followers, fewer than the 41.5 million fans he had on Facebook on the same date.<ref name"185million"/> By mid-April 2012, he had over 20 million followers.<ref name="soccerkaka"/> In April 2012, he gained one new follower every other second.<ref name="bieberlink2"/><ref name="bieberlink1"/> On 31 May 2012, when Lady Gaga hit the 25 million follower mark, Bieber had 22.9 million followers.<ref name="wowrecord"/> On 27 June 2012, he reached 24 million followers.
Some of the earliest Bieber related content on Twitter appeared in 2007. One example of this content was posted that year by a user named Scooter sharing a video of Ne-Yo's "So Sick" being sung by Bieber.<ref name="Falsani2011"/> Fans of the musician use Twitter to keep up with his latest activities,<ref name="Gogerly2012"/><ref name="WarnerAndron2011"/> and express their general love of him, with some Tweets being as young as thirteen years old.<ref name="Balzer2011"/>
Bieber fans use the service to try to get his attention, including friends of 20-year old Hélène Campbell who successfully got Bieber to tweet about Campbell's need for an organ transplant. Bieber's tweet said "@alungstory I got the word . . . You have amazing strength. I got u. #BeAnOrganDonor."<ref name="toronto"/><ref name="anactualtweet2"/> Trillium, who normally gets an average of 50 registrations a day for organ donation, had 1,500 in response to the tweet.<ref name="donateorgan"/><ref name="organdonation2"/>
Bieber Twitter followers frequently offer their support on Twitter. Following an incident in Israel when Bieber was surrounded by paparazzi while trying to visit a church and after having vented about it on Twitter, thousands of fans made comments on Twitter, offering him positive advice and in a few cases making abusive comments about the photographers.<ref name="Falsani2011"/> They also offered support to him after he was attacked at Macy's.<ref name="macyattack"/>
For some people, including Ashton Kutcher, Twitter was their first introduction to Bieber; eventually, Bieber and Kutcher worked together on pranks.<ref name="biebstwits37"/> Celebrities like Joel Madden have been known to tweet about meeting Bieber or seeing him live and in concert.<ref name="joelmadden"/> Boxer David Haye tweeted about having a training session with Bieber.<ref name="heboxes"/> During Bieber's November 2011 live performance on The Today Show, there were more than 50,000 mentions connecting the show and Bieber on Twitter every single hour it aired as the performance aired in different time zones.<ref name="biebstwit6"/> While the movie Justin Bieber: Never Say Never had an Internet Movie Database (IMDB) score of 1.1 out of a possible 10, people still wrote 25,000 tweets about the movie. This compares to Inception, which earned an IMBD score of 8.9 and 167,000 tweets were made about it.<ref name="Baeza-YatesVries2012"/>
In March 2012, Bieber fans wanted to unseat Lady Gaga as the most popular celebrity on Twitter. The fan campaign is described by Reuters as a "jihad against Gaga's Twitter dominance."<ref name="jihad"/> Bieber's fans managed to make #OperationUnfollowGaga a trending topic on Twitter by mid-March. The campaign annoyed some Bieber fans and was not successful. Neither Bieber nor Lady Gaga discussed their mutual fanbase's campaigns on Twitter.<ref name="biebstwits23"/>
Twitter mishaps and controversy
Bieber, along with other celebrities, has been the subject of false reports of his death on Twitter,<ref name="Falsani2011"/><ref name="biebstwits24"/><ref name="biebstwits30"/><ref nameaddict2/> including reports in 2011 that he felt obliged to respond to on Twitter to inform his followers he was alive.<ref name"Bussmann2011"/><ref name="Falsani2011"/> One false report of his death that Twitter users initially believed became a trending topic on the site.<ref name="bieberlink10"/> After he made a guest appearance on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, actress Marg Helgenberger criticised his on-set behaviour on a French radio program. When news of this reached Bieber, he commented on Twitter to say "I know who i am and sometimes people r just going 2 say what they want. Keep ur head up and be the man ur mama raised. #killemwithkindness."<ref name="Falsani2011"/><ref name="biebstwits32"/><ref name="biebstwits17"/>
Actor Charlie Sheen attempted to send a direct message to Bieber, but failed and inadvertently revealed Sheen's number to all Sheen's Twitter followers in December 2011.<ref name="biebstwit3"/><ref name="biebstwits31"/><ref name="biebstwits34"/><ref name="biebstwits35"/> As a result, Sheen needed to get a new number.<ref name="newnumber"/> Sheen's tweet was named as one of the top ten Twitter faux pas of 2011 by The Daily Telegraph.<ref name="biebstwits46"/> Bieber fans were unhappy with comedian Jimmy Kimmel in January 2012 because Kimmel had copied Bieber's profile to his own. Some demanded Kimmel admit he did this and remove the profile. A few fans even went to far as to issue death threats to Kimmel. Kimmel responded to at least one fan, and Bieber also weighed in the situation to let his followers know he was in on the joke.<ref name="biebstwit4"/> Bieber made a tweet in March 2012 that said "call me now" and included a phone number for a Texas couple. He subsequently deleted the tweet, but it was viewed by his many followers in the interim. The couple were bombarded with phone calls, and threatened to sue Bieber for having made the tweet.<ref name="biebstwit8"/><ref name="biebstwits38"/>
In October 2011, Mariah Yeater falsely accused Bieber of impregnating her, claiming he fathered her child. Bieber largely remained silent on the topic until he mentioned it on Twitter on 21 April 2012, saying "Dear mariah yeeter...we have never met...so from the heart i just wanted to say..." followed by a link to a YouTube video of Borat repeatedly saying “You will never get this”.<ref name="AutoGG-5"/> Fans discussed Bieber's tweet and offered him their support. He responded by re-tweeting one of their tweets.<ref name="biebstwit10"/><ref namebieberlink3/><ref name"justinonfatherhood"/><ref name="makesfun"/><ref name="bieberlink19"/> His prior comment on the topic was in early November, when he said "All the rumors...the gossip....Im gonna focus on the positives....the music."<ref name="biebstwit14"/> Bieber's fans have been abusive towards Yeater for a while as a result of the controversy.<ref namebieberlink3/><ref namebieberlink19/> The discussion of Yeater on Twitter was large, and trended on Twitter for 12 hours at one point.<ref namebieberlink19/> Bieber fans threatened Yeater in response to the allegations.<ref namebieberlink19/><ref name="bieberlink18"/> A riot started in November 2009 related to Justin Bieber, which resulted in James A. Roppo, attached to Bieber's record company, being arrested because he failed to post an update to Twitter to keep the 3,000 Bieber fans who came to a mall informed that a Bieber appearance was canceled.<ref name="bieberlink12"/><ref name="Hombach65"/><ref name="CohenSaul201222"/> Bieber fans have tweeted death threats to Bieber's girlfriend, Selena Gomez.<ref namebieberlink19/><ref namebieberlink18/> Bieber fans on Twitter have also issued death threats to Kim Kardashian. This happened in 2010 after the pair met at a White House related event. The negative attention resulted in Kardashian requesting Bieber intervene with his fans.<ref name=bieberlink18/>

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