X

Taylor Swift is still the most influential person on Twitter in 2019

The queen has upped her Twitter game this year and retained her crown.

Katie Collins Senior European Correspondent
Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.
Katie Collins
2 min read
gettyimages-1189933650

Swift is dominating in all spheres.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin / Contributor

It's plain for all to see, Taylor Swift has had a blockbuster year. 

She's received commercial and critical success for her latest album Lover, won Grammy and Golden Globe nominations, turned 30 (happy birthday, Tay!), received an artist of the decade award at the AMAs and the woman of the decade gong at the Billboard Awards. Most of inspiring of all, she seems to be both in a period of intense creativity and just generally thriving and living her best life.

On Thursday she was gifted another accolade -- that of the most influential person on Twitter 2019. It's the second year in a row she's earned this distinction, according to social media analysis company Brandwatch. Brandwatch uses its audience analysis tool to give tweeters an influencer score out of 100 based on how much genuine engagement they spark, with Swift scoring 97.

It's hardly a surprising result given that Swift came out on top last year, even though she only tweeted 13 times in total. This year she's seriously upped her Twitter game, crossposting almost everything to Twitter that she also posts on Instagram and Tumblr -- her favored social media platform. She's also gone through more intense flurries of activity around the release of her lead singles and Lover, sometimes even reposting fan pictures and favoriting tweets (including this one I wrote about about her new cat, Benjamin).

In the top 10, Swift is joined by fellow female musicians Katy Perry, Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga, along with TV host Ellen DeGeneres and reality star Kim Kardashian. The men who made it into the top 10 were far more likely to have desk jobs (Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi) with the exception of soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo.

Outside of the top 10, this trend starts to disintegrate with more male musicians entering the list, although female artists continue to feature heavily throughout. One notable omission from the list is climate change activist Greta Thunberg, who currently has an influencer score of 88. This is something that Brandwatch expects to change next year following her Time cover and further growth in her real-world influence.