Selena Gomez gained 19 million Instagram followers in wake of Hailey Bieber drama

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Selena Gomez recently became the most-followed woman on Instagram and is close to breaking the 400 million mark. 

As of Friday afternoon, Selena's follower count stood at 397 million. According to a team of data analysts from Lottery Texts using data from Social Blade, 19 million people followed her in the past 30 days. They surveyed celebrity profiles between February 6 and March 7 to determine the artists who gained and lost the most followers in that time frame.

Fans believe Selena is enjoying a following boom because of the ongoing drama with Hailey Bieber. That same drama caused the model to hemorrhage viewers; in the same period of time, 980,430 people hit the "unfollow" button on Hailey's profile.

Kylie Jenner, who used to be the most-followed woman on Instagram, was connected to the "mean girls" drama, and her follower count apparently suffered as a result. The analysts claim Kylie lost close to 1 million followers — 993,337 to be exact — over the same period of time.

Both Rihanna and Beyoncé gained over 5 million followers. Taylor Swift welcomed 4.4 million new followers, while Cardi B rounded out the top five after 3.7 million more people hit the "follow" button.

On the other hand, Billie Eilish is among the celebrities who lost the most followers in a month — and fans think it's because she recently revealed on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast that she deleted social media apps off her phone. Over the past 30 days, she lost 519,676 followers.

Another artist to lose a fair amount of followers was Ariana Grande, who saw 229,052 people leave her followers page. Dua Lipa also saw 117,444 fans jump ship in the past 30 days.

Friday, March 10, 2023 at 3:50PM by Megan Stone Permalink