SpaceX moon tourist earns retweet record with $900K giveaway
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa surpassed Nugget Boy's 2017 plea to Wendy's.
Yusaku Maezawa, the Japanese entrepreneur and and SpaceX's first private passenger, broke the Twitter record for most retweeted tweet over the weekend.
The Japanese billionaire who'll be Elon Musk's first paying passenger for a trip to the moon used his deep pockets to get the most retweeted tweet on all time over weekend.
Yusaku Maezawa, who was revealed as the mystery SpaceX moon passenger back in September, had 4.8 million retweets as of Monday morning, crushing Carter Wilkinson's 2017 attempt to get a free one-year supply of chicken nuggets out of Wendy's.
The 43-year-old founder of online fashion mall Zozotown on Saturday tweeted that its New Year's sale raked in 10 billion yen (around $92,310,000) at the fastest pace ever and offered to split 100 million yen (around $924,000) between 100 randomly selected people who shared his tweet.
ZOZOTOWN新春セールが史上最速で取扱高100億円を先ほど突破！！日頃の感謝を込め、僕個人から100名様に100万円【総額1億円のお年玉】を現金でプレゼントします。応募方法は、僕をフォローいただいた上、このツイートをRTするだけ。受付は1/7まで。当選者には僕から直接DMします！ #月に行くならお年玉 pic.twitter.com/cKQfPPbOI3
— Yusaku Maezawa (MZ) 前澤友作 (@yousuck2020) January 5, 2019
"With gratitude, I will give you 100 million yen [100 million yen grand price for 100 people] from individuals in cash. To apply, just follow me and just RT this tweet. Receptionist is up to 1/7. I will DM directly from winners!," reads his translated tweet.
On Monday, he tweeted his thanks to his followers for helping him achieve a retweet world record. Later that day, Twitter confirmed that Maezawa had taken the most retweeted title.
HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS pic.twitter.com/4SrfHmEMo3
— Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm) April 6, 2017
Maezawa had a major financial advantage over Wilkinson, a Nevada teen who surpassed Ellen DeGeneres' 2014 Oscar selfie with 3.6 million retweets after Wendy's told him he'd need 18 million to get free nuggets. Ellen's tweet was retweeted 3.3 million times.
If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014
Electronics maker Sharp riffed on Maezawa's tweet with a humorous push for people to buy its products, as previously noted by Quartz.
"With our gratitude, we would be grateful if many more than 100 people could buy 1 million yen of products (totalling 10 billion yen). The application method doesn't involve having to RT or follow us, you can just buy it from any store. Taking applications forever," the company wrote in Japanese.
First published on Jan. 7 at 4:12 a.m. PT.
Updated on Jan. 8 at 2:43 a.m. PT: Adds Twitter confirmation.
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