It pays to have famous friends — or, in Taylor Swift’s case, friends with large online followings who will tweet about attending your 25th birthday party.
An array of A-listers (like Nick Jonas, Selena Gomez, Lorde, Haim and more) did just that on the night of Dec. 13, spreading online birthday wishes and generating enough social buzz to send Swift to the No. 1 position on the Social 50 for the third time.
The Social 50 ranks the most popular artists on YouTube, Vevo, Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, Wikipedia, Myspace and Instagram. The chart’s methodology blends weekly additions of friends/fans/followers along with artist page views, song plays and reactions as measured by music analytics company Next Big Sound.
The last time Swift topped the Social 50 was in April 2013, the week following the Academy of Country Music Awards where she took a fan battling leukemia as her date to the show.