Lady Gaga成Twitter人气王：粉丝突破2千万|Lady Gaga breaks Twitter record

Nearly four years after joining the social networking site Lady Gaga is the first Twitter user to reach 20 million followers.

Now more than two million followers ahead of anyone else on the site, Lady Gaga has cemented her place as the most followed on the planet.

The singer, who signed up to Twitter on 26 March 2008, had 20.12 million followers as of Monday for her @ladygaga account. A 20 millionth "Little Monster," as she calls her fans, signed up to follow her Twitter feed over the weekend.

Teen pop idol Justin Bieber was next with 18.11 million followers, and rounding out the top five were three other singers: Katy Perry with 15.75 million followers, Shakira with 14.56 million and Rihanna with 14.49 million.

US President Barack Obama is in eighth place with 12.84 million followers of his @barackobama account.

Lady Gaga has eight million fans on Facebook and more than 800,000 "circles" on Google+. Thanks in part to her viral marketing and social network sucess, the pop sensation's latest album has sold more than eight million copies worldwide.

The best-selling singer puts the popularity of her following down to writing tweets herself, rather than hiring staff to do so - as many other stars do.

She occasionally offers her followers backstage concert tickets and unveils promotion pictures on her account, but mostly she tweets about anything from fashion and music to cookies.

Lady Gaga at Harvard University to launch her Born This Way Foundation in Cambridge-Photo: REUTERS