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2019 has been a record-breaking year for social media, topping off a record-breaking decade.

A range of platforms have been host to some truly unbelievable records from a number of surprising recipients; including the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, a cat and an egg!

Instagram

2019 was kicked off to a record-breaking start with January seeing not one, but two new Instagram records.

No-one would have foreseen that a humble hen's egg could garner millions of likes, but nevertheless, it happened!

The account world_record_egg was launched to take the title for most liked image on Instagram from Kylie Jenner, who had a cool 18 million likes on a post announcing the arrival of her baby daughter, Stormi, posted February 2018.

Kylie Jenner

An image of a hen's egg was posted with the caption: "Let's set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this."

Ten days later, on Monday 14 January, the photo of the egg duly surpassed the reality TV star's total, reaching 30.5 million likes during the afternoon.

This record came hot on the heels of a record achieved by Kang Daniel a few days earlier. He joined the platform on New Year's day and quickly began amassing followers, gaining one million in just 11 hours 36 minutes and earning himself the title for fastest time to gain one million followers on Instagram.

The 22-year-old's first post, a selfie with the caption 'HELLO', appeared on 1 January 2019 at 10:00 p.m. PST (Pacific Standard Time) before the channel hit 1 million followers on 2 January at 09:36 a.m. PST.

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However, in April, a royal duo joined the platform and snatched Kang Daniel's title.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle created a joint Instagram account, named sussexroyal, on Tuesday 2 April. 

They reached the 1 million milestone in just 5 hours and 45 minutes, almost halving the current record. Since then, the account following has grown to 9.9 million at the time of writing on 16 December 2019.

According to journalist Benjamin Wareing, the rush of followers to the account caused Instagram to crash momentarily due to the unprecedented user volume. 

The flurry of action may be fuelled by the fact that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, deleted all her personal social media accounts ahead of her wedding to Harry in May 2018. This account is her first presence on social media since joining the British royal family. 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

Another Instagram star to rise to new, record-breaking heights this year was everyones favourite feline, Nala Cat

Nala Cat™ has held the record for most followers on Instagram for a cat since March 2017, but she seems to keep topping her own record. As of 2 September 2019, she had 4,215,466 followers. 

 
 
View this post on Instagram
 

A post shared by Nala Cat ™ (@nala_cat) on

 

YouTube

Our next record was set by none other than K-pop band BTS - who have a number of Guinness World Records titles to their name.

The South Korean group's video debut of their single "Boy With Luv", featuring US singer songwriter Halsey, garnered millions and millions of views in just hours.

According to YouTube, the video debuted with 74.6 million views in the first 24 hours, achieving Guinness World Records titles for:

The debut single is taken from the group's new EP, Map of the Soul: Persona, which features a collaboration with fellow record holder Ed Sheeran.

Twitter

K-pop fans also contributed to another record title this year during the annual Soompi Awards, a ceremony which celebrates Korean TV and music.

They achieved the most used hashtag on Twitter in 24 hours, with the hashtag #TwitterBestFandom. It was used by viewers while the voting took place to promote their favourite K-pop band.

The hashtag was used an incredible 60,055,339 times in 24 hours. Unsurprisingly, the BTS army contributed heavily to the result.


TikTok 

TikTok has exploded in popularity this year and it seems like its growth isn't going to stop anytime soon.

A variety of celebrities can be found on the short-form video app including Will Smith, Miley Cyrus, Ellen Degeneres, Shakira, Cardi B., Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sam Smith.

But in October of this year, k-pop BTS joined the platform - and their dedicated army of fans soon ensured a record-breaking start for the account.

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In just 3 hours 31 minutes, the boyband broke the record for the fastest time to reach one million followers on TikTok.

The band officially joined the platform at 19:40 KST (Korean Standard Time) and by 23:11 KST they had achieved the record.

According to stats from TikTok, after 13 hours the group had gained two million followers and over four million likes on their debut post. After 59 hours, less than two-and-a-half days after joining the platform, they reached three million fans.

You can check out some of our amazing record holders on Guinness World Records' social media channels as well as more pop music and social media records in Guinness World Records 2020 which is out now.

Guinness World Records 2020