Lady Gaga Takes Forbes’ Most Powerful Celebrity Title From Oprah

by Mr.Soloxen in People, May 20, 2011

According to Forbes’ Magazine’s Celebrity 100 list, Lady Gaga is now the most influential celebrity in the world, knocking Oprah Winfrey from the top spot.

To say that Lady Gaga has a cult following is an understatement. The fact is that Lady Gaga has a cult following that includes a huge swath of the general population. She has her hardest core fans who will worship anything that she says or does, but she also has millions of people who simply like her music, with or without her antics and personal opinions. As a result, Lady Gaga has rapidly ascended the ranks of the most powerful celebrities in the world – and this year Forbes believes she is THE most powerful celebrity, taking the number one spot from Oprah, who perennially enjoys the top perch.

No need to shed any tears for Oprah, however, as she only fell one spot to second on the list. In addition to Gaga’s meteoric rise, Oprah has taken a bit of a hit with the pending end of her top-rated talk show and the fact that she’ll be working hard behind the scenes to get her OWN network off the ground. Once OWN is able to establish some credible content and grow its ratings, it’s quite possible that Oprah will reclaim the top spot.

But for now the list is being taken over by the likes of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber – Biebs made it to number 3 on the list – with much of the credit going to their mastery of social media. Gaga has over 30 million Facebook Fans and nearly 10 million followers on Twitter. In that respect, she is a global brand that rivals the most powerful companies in the world. Bieber’s most successful single, Baby, has been viewed online over 500 million times – a record.