Only one third of Katy Perry’s Twitter army are actually real people – the rest are bots

It’s a well-established fact that Katy Perry is Twitter’s most followed star, but as it turns out that enormous following might be, well, not all that impressive.

According to DigitalSpy and analytics tool twitteraudit.com, 68% of her 99.2 million followers aren’t actually real people, and are instead just automated bots.

On the surface of it, her total puts her comfortably above the likes of Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift, but when her number of artificial fans gets taken into account, she takes a serious drop in the rankings.

While none of these figures can be officially confirmed, the algorithm behind twitteraudit.com places Taylor Swift’s real flesh-and-blood fans at 88% of her 84.3 million, leaving her well ahead of her often bitter rival with 74.2 million compared to Perry’s 31.7 million.

This drops the queen of Twitter from first place to ninth, quite a fall from grace considering how much these metrics are used to determine a mega-star’s relative value. While plenty of artists would sell their souls for a single million let alone thirty, losing two thirds of an almost 100-million-strong following would be a tough blow for a star supposedly of Perry’s stature.

Interestingly enough, Twitter itself seems to be plagued with bot accounts as well, and its claimed figure of 60.8m would drop right down to 31m were they purged – that is, right behind Perry, and also behind Instagram on 35m.

Yes, Instagram has more real Twitter followers than Twitter itself, as does YouTube, with 48.6m, putting it in 4th place overall. Pick your game up, Twitter!

As for the rest of the field? According to the calculations, the actual top 5 is as follows, while the rest of DigitalSpy’s top 25 rankings can be found here.

#1 Taylor Swift
Claimed: 84.3m Genuine: 74.2m

#2 Barack Obama
Claimed: 89.2m Genuine: 70.4m

#3 The Ellen Show
Claimed: 69m Genuine: 50.4m

#4 YouTube
Claimed: 68.5m Genuine: 48.6m

#5 Kim Kardashian
Claimed: 52.9m Genuine: 44.4m

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.