Justin Bieber overtakes Lady Gaga on Twitter

Justin Bieber has overtaken Lady Gaga to become the most followed person on Twitter.

The 18-year-old singer passed his online rival, taking him to more than 33.3 million followers.

Lady Gaga had been the most followed since she overtook Britney Spears in 2010.

According to Twitter monitoring website twittercounter.com, Katy Perry, Rihanna and Barack Obama are the three immediately behind the pair.

Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber have long been the two most popular users on the social networking site, but Bieber has always lagged slightly behind.

Gaga was the first person to pass 10 million, then 20 million and then 30 million followers.

Both artists are prominent on Twitter through their fans, nicknamed 'Beliebers' and 'Little Monsters'.

Last year, Lady Gaga used her followers to help her track down a fan who she wanted to employ on her creative team, The Haus of Gaga.

The singer says she updates her account personally.

Lady Gaga still leads the way on Facebook with 54.98 million 'likes', compared to Justin Bieber's 50.66 million.

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