Billionaire claims record for retweets

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa’s expanding list of cash-fuelled bragging rights includes Picassos, Bugatti supercars and a ticket on Elon Musk’s rocket to the Moon. He can now add to that collection the mantle of having the most-ever retweeted Twitter post.

For the honour, the founder of Japan’s second-largest online shopping site Zozo will be paying out a total of ¥100 million (Dh3.3m) to 100 lucky people who shared the post. Seeking to be one of the randomly chosen winners, Mr Maezawa’s audience retweeted his post a record 3.8 million times, and gave it more than 900,000 “likes”.

The previous record holder for retweets was a college student in the US whose goal was to get a year’s free supply of chicken nuggets from the Wendy’s fast-food franchise. That post had 3.58 million retweets and 990,000 likes. Ellen DeGeneres’s 2014 Oscars selfie with Hollywood stars including Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie was second with 3.3 million retweets.

“To participate, all you have to do is follow me and RT this tweet,” Mr Maezawa wrote on Saturday. The tweet featured a picture of a man astride a rocket silhouetted against a full moon, in a style of the famous image from the movie ET.

Mr Maezawa also touted that his shopping site Zozotown reached ¥10 billion in merchandise volume during a New Year’s sale. The business is the main source of the 43-year-old’s $1.7bn net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index. Zozo’s shares jumped as much as 6.9 per cent in Tokyo.