Yesterday, Beyoncé took to her Instagram page to reveal to the world that she is pregnant once more with a beautiful, staged photo, and the masses instantly went crazy.
The picture, which features the superstar in just her underwear and a veil holding her baby bump in front of an array of flowers, is now the most-liked photo on Instagram. As of writing, the photo has 8.2 million likes. Already, Bey’s upload is nearly 2 million likes ahead the previously most-liked picture, which belongs to Selena Gomez. The actress and singer uploaded a snap of her sipping from a bottle of Coca-Cola, and it was declared the most popular photo on Instagram this past summer. That photo has just over 6.3 million likes, so it is still comfortable in second place.
Beyoncé owns what is by far one of the most popular accounts on Instagram, including both musicians and non-musicians. She now has over 93 million followers, a number that likely grew due to the intense media coverage of just this one photo.
While owning the most popular photo on the world’s biggest photo-focused social media site is certainly impressive, what is perhaps even more shocking is how fast Bey was able to beat the previous best. It took the “Formation” singer less than 12 hours to claim the title.
In addition to taking over Instagram, Beyoncé’s announcement was also seemingly the only thing people could talk about on Twitter. According to the social media site, discussion of the Queen’s maternity photo exploded instantly, and in just the first 45 minutes after she went public with the news, at least 500,000 tweets launched mentioning it, and that figure only climbed higher as time went on and people around the world learned that one of the most powerful artists on the planet is expecting twins (at least that’s what her wording—”We are incredibly grateful that our family will be growing by two”—would have us believe).
Musicians make up four of the top five most popular accounts on Instagram, with the No. 1 being…the company itself. The rest of the top five is occupied by Gomez (No. 2, 108 million), Taylor Swift (No. 3, 96 million), Ariana Grande (No. 4, 95 million) and the mother-to-be herself at No. 5. While Instagram is not known as a music-only platform, and it isn’t an online destination for listening to music (other than small clips featured in videos), musicians still make it to the top when it comes to popularity, powering the world’s biggest photo site.
This article was updated on Feb. 2 at 11 a.m. ET to reflect the new number of Instagram likes and Beyonce’s follower count.
PrimeGhana 