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 Facebook Inc-owned Instagram confirmed its top five accounts
for the first time, with 25-year-old pop singer Taylor Swift
leading the pack with 49.6 million users.
Reality star Kim Kardashian, 34, boasts 48.1 million followers
and R&B singer Beyonce, also 34, commands 47.2 million fans. Pop
singers Selena Gomez, 23, and Ariana Grande, 22, have garnered
45.9 million and 44.6 million fans respectively.
"The type of content we see from these people is authentic and
often times really fun," said Charles Porch, head of global
creative programs at Instagram, citing Swift's penchant for cat
videos and Beyonce's recent glimpse into her vacation.
"It's a view people haven't really had before, especially in
real time," he said.
To compare, U.S. president Barack Obama has 4.7 million
Instagram followers. Instagram discounted its own account, which
is followed by 103 million users.
Instagram has racked up more than 400 million global users as it
turns five, with 75 percent coming from outside the United
States, the company said last month. The average time a user
spends on the app is 21 minutes a day.
The top five ladies of Instagram are mostly popular with a
younger audience, with 85 percent of each of their fanbases aged
under 34, the audience coveted by advertisers which Instagram
hopes to draw more of by the end of the year.
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Singer and actress Gomez, who often comments on posts and responds
to fans directly, has the most engaged account, Instagram said.
The top accounts also each reflect a 75 percent international
fanbase - Grammy-winning Swift's second-biggest number of Instagram
followers comes from Indonesia, Kardashian's in Britain, Beyonce and
Gomez's in Brazil and Grande's in Mexico.
Swift's most-liked photos include one with her musician boyfriend
Calvin Harris and another with flowers she received from rapper
Kanye West, both garnering 2.5 million likes.
Kardashian, often dubbed 'queen of the selfie,' offers a look into
her fashion and beauty regimes. The elusive Beyonce uses Instagram
as her main method of communication since unofficially retiring from
doing direct interviews.
"What Instagram is doing is giving all these ladies a direct line to
their fans and, by having a direct line, they're controlling their
message," Porch said.
(Editing by Paul Tait)
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