Billionaire to pay $100 mn yen to 100 people after getting most retweeted tweet ever

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 Wendy’s.

Yusaku Maezawa (Source: Zozo.com)

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa’s expanding list of cash-fueled 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 honor, the founder of Japan’s second-largest online shopping site Zozo Inc. will be paying out a total of 100 million yen ($920,000) to 100 lucky people who shared the post. Seeking to be one of the randomly chosen winners, Maezawa’s audience retweeted his post a record 3.8 million times, and gave it more than 900,000 “likes.”

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

The previous record holder for retweets was a college student in the U.S. whose goal was to get a year’s free supply of chicken nuggets from the Wendy’s fast-food franchise, according to Statista. 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,” Maezawa wrote on Jan. 5. The tweet featured a picture of a man astride a rocket silhouetted against full moon, in a style of the iconic image from the movie “E.T.”

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

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