People are attracted to many things. But in common, things that involve cash giveaways would be the most popular.
On Twitter, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, founder and CEO of Japan’s online fashion retailer Zozotown tweeted a promise to give ¥100 million ($920,000) in cash to 100 random people who follow his account and retweet his post.
"To participate, all you have to do is follow me and RT this tweet," he said in Japanese.
Quickly, this tweet became the most shared tweet on the social network, after being shared more than 4 million times and liked by more than 1 million people.
ZOZOTOWN新春セールが史上最速で取扱高100億円を先ほど突破！！日頃の感謝を込め、僕個人から100名様に100万円【総額1億円のお年玉】を現金でプレゼントします。応募方法は、僕をフォローいただいた上、このツイートをRTするだけ。受付は1/7まで。当選者には僕から直接DMします！ #月に行くならお年玉 pic.twitter.com/cKQfPPbOI3
— Yusaku Maezawa (MZ) 前澤友作 (@yousuck2020) January 5, 2019
This makes Maezawa’s tweet more popular than Barack Obama's "Four More Years" tweet in 2012, surpassing Ellen DeGeneres' famous 2014 Oscars selfie, as well as the 18 million retweets request from a teenager who wanted free Wendy's chicken nuggets for a year.
The Japanese entrepreneur announced his giveaway as a way to thank his customers after Zozotown’s New Year’s sale which reached a record of ¥10 billion yen. This was the fastest pace ever, he said.
His tweet was hashtagged “a New Year’s gift for going to the moon.”
Before reaching his success, Maezawa was a drummer for a hardcore punk band signed with a major label. He was also a collector of imported punk and hardcore records as well as CDs.
This hobby then became a catalog business which offered music as well as niche fashion apparel called Start Today. This was the starting point for his shopping website Zozotown in 2004.
Maezawa is known to live a flamboyant life. Among others, he was said to have purchased a 1717 Stradivarius violin, spent $110.5 million on a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting at a Sotheby's auction, and owns Pablo Picasso's Buste de Femme art work.
He also bought a ticket for the first commercial flight to flyby the Moon using Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket scheduled for 2023.
Before his famous tweet, Maezawa and his Zozotown were relatively unknown outside Japan.
But after his tweet, his @yousuck2020 handle has its follower number to surge passing 4 million, from a little more than 500,000 before his giveaway promotion.
