The 2009 table had a pleasing oddness to it. Celebrities were there, of course, and news organizations. But so were Twitter's founders, a handful of tech bloggers, a productivity author, a deals site and an account written in the voice of a cat. The hundredth most-followed account in May 2009 had 352,358 followers. It was a big number then. It was also a number an early, enthusiastic blogger could reach.
That mix is the first thing that would change. On the big platforms the very top is now dominated by athletes, musicians and entertainers, with follower counts larger than the 2009 leaders by orders of magnitude. The early adopters who made the 2009 list strange are still around. They just aren't anywhere near the top hundred any more.
Which hundred?
In 2009 "the most popular people on Twitter" was close to a complete description of a certain kind of online fame. Now it would be one list of several. The most-followed accounts on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Threads and Bluesky overlap, but not much, and each platform has stars who barely exist anywhere else. A 2026 version of 100twt would have to choose a platform, or try to merge six rankings measured in different units: followers, subscribers, likes.
Merging them would also mix formats. The 2009 river worked because every item was the same shape, 140 characters of text. A river of today's top hundred would be mostly video, some photos and a little text, and it's hard to picture as a table.
The feed that decides
The bigger change is in what "subscribed" means. In 2009, following an account meant seeing what it posted, in order, and nothing else. The river was simply that idea made visible. Most large platforms now build the main feed with ranking systems that mix followed accounts with recommendations, so following the top hundred wouldn't guarantee seeing them, or seeing only them.
The river hasn't disappeared, though. RSS readers still work the way the 2009 pages did. Several services keep a chronological "Following" view next to the ranked one, and some newer networks let users build or subscribe to custom feeds that are, in effect, rivers with a different list of sources. The idea is still around, mostly as an option you have to go looking for.
Nobody could build the page
100twt was possible because one company published an open API, and one person could poll a hundred timelines without asking permission or paying. That arrangement is gone on most of the big platforms. Access is now paid, rate-limited, or not offered at all for this kind of use. A cross-platform top-100 river would run into six sets of terms before it ran into any technical problem.
So the honest answer to the 2009 question, asked in 2026, is that you could subscribe to the hundred most popular people, platform by platform, and you would see whatever each feed chose to show you. The table that put them all on one page, newest first, reloading every three minutes, belongs to the year it was built.