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Yusaku Maezawa: Japanese billionaire tweets most retweeted tweet

AFP Yusaku MaezawaAFP
Yusaku Maezawa pledged to share nearly $1m between 100 people who shared the tweet

A Japanese billionaire has ousted a chicken nugget-seeking US teenager to become tweeter of the most retweeted tweet of all time.

Yusaku Maezawa's tweet dated 5 January has now been shared more than four million times.

That's half a million more than Carter Wilkerson's 2017 request for help to secure himself a year of free chicken nuggets from fast food chain Wendy's.

But Mr Maezawa was offering some incentive to people to share his post.

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The founder of Japanese online clothing retailer Zozo Inc promised to share 100m yen ($925,000; £725,000) between 100 randomly selected people who shared the tweet.

"To participate, all you have to do is follow me and RT this tweet," he said.

The post appeared to be in celebration of his website Zozotown making 10bn yen in sales over the Christmas and New Year period.

Mr Maezawa first became famous as the drummer in punk band Switch Style, but made his fortune in the fashion world. He is believed to have a personal wealth of close to $3bn, a lot of which he spends on art.

He became known in the West late last year after he was named as the first private passenger due to be flown around the Moon by SpaceX, the company owned by another famous billionaire tweeter, Elon Musk.

The price Mr Maezawa agreed to pay for his ticket to space has not been disclosed, but according to Mr Musk it was "a lot of money".

Mr Maezawa has said he plans to take a group of artists with him on the flight, slated for 2023.

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Carter Wilkerson set Twitter alight in May 2017 after asking Wendy's how many retweets he needed to get a year's worth of free chicken nuggets.

The fast food chain said "18 million".

Mr Wilkerson's all caps tweet - "HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS" - went on to get more than 3.5 million retweets with numerous celebrities joining in, and other brands jumping on board to offer him things like free flights to get to a Wendy's.

Though he didn't reach the target, Wendy's gave him a year of free nuggets anyway.

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Before Mr Wilkerson, US actor and presenter Ellen DeGeneres had held the most tweeted spot for more than three years, with a selfie - then quite a novel concept - featuring stars in the audience of the 2014 Oscars ceremony.