TikTok's first user to hit 100 million followers is Charli D'Amelio (2024)

Charli D'Amelio's meteoric rise on TikTok just hit a milestone that no one else has so far: 100 million followers.

It's a huge number for the platform, where no other user even comes close to D'Amelio's follow count. The second most followed account on TikTok as of Nov. 22, 2020 is Addison Rae, who currently stands at 69.6 million. Zach King is at #3 with 52.8 million, and everyone after that clocks in below the 50 million mark.

They all rank higher than numerous celebrity superstars, including Will Smith, Ariana Grande, and The Rock. It's also, hilariously, more than double the number of followers keeping up with TikTok's own official account.

While the achievement is a big one for D'Amelio personally, it's also a reflection of TikTok's rapid growth as a platform. It took YouTube firebrand PewDiePie, who launched his channel in 2010, nine years to hit the same figure. D'Amelio, meanwhile, shared her first TikTok in May 2019.

Although YouTube is more analogous with TikTok, it's a similar story over on Twitter and Instagram. Katy Perry was the first on Twitter to hit 100 million followers, and it happened eight years after she joined. It took Selena Gomez less time to get there on Instagram, where she was the first, but not by much: Her account went live in 2013 and she reached the 100 million milestone in 2018.

D'Amelio is a Connecticut-based internet personality who is best known, obviously, for her social media presence, particularly on TikTok. She regularly shares dance videos set to the hit songs of the moment, and she's leveraged her success with that in some surprising directions.

In fact, D'Amelio is one of the few people who will have reasons to look back on 2020 fondly. In addition to the TikTok milestone, she also had a high-profile appearance in an ad that aired during the 2020 Super Bowl. A few months later, she and her sister struck a deal with the Ramble Podcast Network, and a few months after that, word got out that the D'Amelio family is the subject of an in-development reality TV series.