Bieber's hotter. But Gaga got there first.
Lady Gaga just became the first artist in history to pass the one-billion-viewed mark on YouTube, leaving nearest challenger Justin Bieber in the dust... if you can call his tally of 965 million views "dusty."
And you can't, because, in fact, Sir Bieber is within weeks of catching up with and surpassing Lady G in the YouTube record book. For the quarter that began in July of this year and ended September, JB was clearly on the faster track. His videos were viewed an average 3.98 million times a day, vastly outpacing her 2.04 million daily views.
These competitive figures speak to the big pop question of 2010: Is it Bieber's world and Gaga just lives in it? (My World 2.0, if we must put a name on this planet?) Or vice versa?
There are other metrics by which we might settle this battle royale. Lady Gaga is still on tops on Twitter, too, with 6.9 million followers, at last glance, the most of any extant celebrity. No doubt Bieber is crying like a "Baby"—all the way to the bank, that is—at trailing behind with a mere 5.9 million Twitter congregants.
On Facebook, Bieber is "liked" by 14.1 million fans... hardly a match for the 21.4 million who "like" the artist formerly known as Stefani Germanotta. In other words, even if Lady Gaga is likely to be giving up her YouTube crown before the end of the year, she'll still be the queen of social-media stats at least well into 2011.
How about sales? Both artists have new releases on the way—a studio album for Gaga, an "acoustic" set for Bieber. Lady Gaga's Fame album has sold 3.8 million, while the followup Fame Monster package has sold an additional 1.3 million. Bieber's My World 2.0 is at 1.9 million, while its predecessor, My World, is at 1.6 million. The point goes to Gaga... for now.
Lady Gaga used her uber-Twitter account to send thanks to her fans for watching her for free on their computers, over and over and over and over and over and over again.
"We reached 1 Billion views on youtube little monsters!" she wrote, so excited that she momentarily forgot her preference for lower-case letters and capitalized Billion. "If we stick together we can do anything." (Except get "don't ask, don't tell" overturned?) "I dub u kings and queens of youtube! Unite!"
Bieber had no such get-out-the-vote message for his own little monsters. His tweets this week have had more to do with odor-iffic triumph.
"couple of you have been asking me about a fragrance," Bieber wrote, sharing Gaga's disregard for needless capitalization. "yes Im working on a real fragrance that will be in department stores next year... and by real I mean a fragrance that comes in a tight bottle and smells..." (What a relief it was to know that the fragrance Bieber is "working on" is the kind that comes bottled.)
Gaga, where is thy retail smell? If you want to stay ahead of Bieber in the celebrity fragrance metrics, too, you'd better get the li'l monsters to work down at the olfactory factory.
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IN-TEXT [Photos: Gaga's most unique fashions] [Rewind: Gaga goes pantsless at Yankees game]