Japanese Billionaire Breezes Past Chicken Nugget Fiend To Claim Most-Retweeted Tweet Ever

By Geoff Weiss • 01/07/2019 •

The reign of Carter Wilkerson, an 18-year-old who famously amassed millions of retweets — the most of all time — in order to win an annual supply of chicken nuggets from Wendy’s, has come to an end.

Nearly two years after Wilkerson’s successful plea on Twitter, which has received 3.6 million retweets (and 991,000 ‘likes’) to date, he has been trumped by the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, Bloomberg reports. Maezawa’s two-day-old tweet serves to promote his online shopping business, Zozo, and also boasts an incentive for followers: Maezawa says he will pay 100 million yen (or roughly $920,000) to 100 randomly-selected people who follow him and retweet the missive.

To date, his tweet (below) has received 5.4 million retweets and 1.3 million likes. Maezawa’s following has also skyrocketed from roughly 400,000 before the sweepstakes to more than 5.6 million today.

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After Maezawa and Wilkerson, the third most-retweeted post is a selfie shared by Ellen DeGeneres from the 2014 Oscar Awards, which features a star-studded lineup including Meryl Street, Brad Pitt, and Lupita Nyong’o.

This isn’t Maezawa’s first stunt involving boatloads of cash to muster up a flurry of headlines. The 43-year-old, who counts a net worth of $1.7 billion, according to Bloomberg, was also the first passenger to book a flight on the moon on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket, slated for 2023.

ZOZOTOWN新春セールが史上最速で取扱高100億円を先ほど突破！！日頃の感謝を込め、僕個人から100名様に100万円【総額1億円のお年玉】を現金でプレゼントします。応募方法は、僕をフォローいただいた上、このツイートをRTするだけ。受付は1/7まで。当選者には僕から直接DMします！ #月に行くならお年玉 pic.twitter.com/cKQfPPbOI3

— Yusaku Maezawa (MZ) 前澤友作 (@yousuck2020) January 5, 2019