Lady Gaga tops Twitter charts

Lady Gaga temporarily replaces Britney Spears as the most-followed person on Twitter.

Lady Gaga has already conquered the pop charts. Now she has a second superlative to add to her resume: Reigning Twitter queen. Over the weekend, Lady Gaga – real name Stefani Germanotta – surpassed fellow pop star Britney Spears to become the most-followed person on Twitter. The race, it should be said, remains close: Lady Gaga has about 5,754,000 followers, while Britney Spears has about 5,708,000.

According to the Associated Press, Lady Gaga tops an exclusive group of Twitter users with more than 5 million followers. Among the elite: actor Ashton Kutcher, talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres and Organizing for America, a Democratic political organization. (By comparison, the omnipresent Justin Bieber has more than four a half million followers.)

Twitter has proved a magnet for public figures of all stripes, including Craig Ferguson and Conan O'Brien, who previously pilloried the social networking platform. Back in April, even Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela – and like O'Brien, a former Twitter trasher – signed up for a Twitter tag. (His Twitter bio identifies Chavez as a "Socialista" and an "Antiimperialista.")

"Comandante Chavez is going to open his Twitter account soon to wage the battle online," Diosdado Cabello, director of Venezuela's state-run telecommunications agency, said back in April. "I'm sure he'll break records for numbers of followers. Well, he didn't exactly break records. But Chavez has done pretty well for himself – 759,000-odd followers, and counting.