YouTuber MrBeast becomes first person to get a million Threads followers, admits to 'cheating on Twitter'

American YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, popularly known as MrBeast, has become the first person on Meta’s Threads app to cross the one-million follower mark. MrBeast reached the milestone on July 6, setting a Guinness World Record, an official release said.

MrBeast joined Threads on the day of its launch and gained a million followers at 2.42pm (BST) / 9.42am (EST) on July 6, according to Guinness World Records’ statement.

The Guinness World Records tweeted a video showing how it monitored MrBeast’s record. “The moment MrBeast reached one million followers on Threads... (yes, this is how we monitored the record) (and yes, it drained the battery from our phone a lot),” the text attached to the video read.

Reacting to the achievement, MrBeast, in a joked tweet: “Shhhhh, don’t let the Twitter police know I am cheating on them.”

Who is MrBeast?

Jimmy Donaldson, or MrBeast, is a YouTuber who joined the video sharing platform in 2012. Now, he has more than 165 million subscribers on his channel.

Born on May 7, 1998, he grew up in Greenville, North Carolina, US, and uploaded his first YouTube video at the age of 13.

He initially created a range of content including gameplay highlights, estimating YouTubers’ wealth, and reacting to YouTuber drama, according to the Business Insider.

MrBeast started gaining significant following in 2015 and 2016 with his “worst intros” video series. In January 2017, MrBeast went viral after uploading a 24-hour long video in which he counted to 100,000.

Following this, he continued making similar videos and reached one million subscribers in November 2017.

MrBeast’s previous world record

In 2022, MrBeast broke the Guinness World Record for the “most subscribers for an individual male on YouTube” with 112,193,139 subscribers.

At present, MrBeast is known for making videos where he gifts huge monetary prizes and offers once-in-a-life time experiences to his fans. MrBeast runs a charity named Beast Philanthropy, which “operates a food pantry with a mobile food distribution network, established to address the food insecurity needs of remote and under-served food deserts”.

About Threads

Threads, Instagram’s text-based conversation app, was launched on July 6 for iOS and Android users in 100 countries. The app, dubbed as the “Twitter Killer”, saw 10 million users flocking to it within the first seven hours of its launch.

Meanwhile, National Geographic and Instagram were the first organisations to hit the one-million followers mark on Threads.

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