From iconic movie moments to obscure scientific references, this prompt got the most attention of any tweet, Twitter metrics suggest.
@tamsully12/Twitter
A tweet has officially achieved 1 billion views in the era of Twitter’s views count features.
Some are questioning the validity of the metric suggesting an eight of the population has seen it.
Twitter rolled out its views feature in December after tech billionaire Elon Musk bought the company.
A historical prompt sent out by one Twitter user has reached 1.1 billion views as of Friday afternoon, but the metric is being questioned by some who aren’t so sure it’s accurate.
There are around 8 billion people in the world, and Twitter metrics claim that a tweet made by user @tamsully12 — who has just under 11,000 followers — has been viewed by about an eighth of mankind. Sent on May 24, the simple prompt has achieved the feat in less than one month.
“WITHOUT GOOGLING,” it reads. “Name a famous historic battle.”
When the tweet broke one billion views on Thursday, its author vowed to celebrate with a bottle of “good champagne.”
But, other users are saying “not so fast.”
“Really @elonmsk? A billion views,” one user asked.
—Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) June 16, 2023
“Ain’t no way 1.1 billion people saw this even if a view counts multiple times for one person,” another wrote.
With one billion views and under 20,000 likes, many questioned the validity of the metric. Reality star-turned-beauty mogul Kim Kardashian also tweeted to her nearly 75 million followers on May 24.
“Hi it’s been a minute. I see @khloekardashian is already over achieving so so figured I would join you guys. How are you Twitter fam,” Kardashian’s tweet read.
Since then, the message has 1.4 million views, 4,486 likes, and 61 quote tweets. @tamsully12’s account, with less than 11,000 followers, dwarfed the global star in views and engagement, according to Twitter metrics.
A context note was later added to clarify that tweet views are “not unique.” One user can be responsible for multiple views if they scroll and view the tweet more than once.
User @tamsully12 had their DMs turned off, and didn’t immediately respond to a public tweet from Insider. Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment following a recent change in policy on how the company interacts with the press.
The request has over 86,000 quote tweets, and most of them are from users who took the opportunity to crack a joke with their answer instead of naming actual battles that occurred throughout history. Some references were easily spotted while others featured two opponents that only certain groups would recognizes.
—SK⚡️ (@raptalksk) June 14, 2023
It’s unclear if the popular tweet that started so many conversations on the app is the first one to reach one billion views. Twitter rolled out the views count feature in December under then-CEO Elon Musk, and users quickly complained.
“Anyone who is logged into Twitter who views a Tweet counts as a view, regardless of where they see the Tweet (e.g. Home, Search, Profiles, etc.) or whether or not they follow the author. If you’re the author, looking at your own Tweet also counts as a view,” Twitter’s definition of a “view” reads.
In October, a spokesperson for the company told Reuters Twitter had reached 238 million monetizable daily active users in the second quarter of 2022. When the views feature first launched in December, user @russotalks attempted to get a tweet to one billion views.
“can we get this tweet to one billion views,” it read.
Six months later, it stands at about 180,000 views.