Simon Cowell Picks Up Nearly 300K Twitter Followers in a Day

8:12 PM PST 11/17/2011 by Kimberly Nordyke

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Michael Becker / FOX

The "X Factor" judge, who joined the social networking site Wednesday afternoon, also has engaged in some friendly rivalry with Piers Morgan.

A day after joining Twitter, Simon Cowell already has a huge following.

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The X Factor judge and creator has more than 298,000 people following his account, @simoncowell, as of Thursday afternoon.

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Cowell joined Twitter on Wednesday, tweeting his first message that afternoon: "It's official, I know it's taken a while. It's really me! We're live in 10 minutes. I'll keep you posted. Lots of love #iamsimon."

Since Wednesday, he's add three Twitter accounts to the eight one he was already following, which included fellow X Factor judges Antonio L.A. Reid, Nicole Scherzinger and Paula Abdul; host Steve Jones; the X Factor account; and his mentees on the show, Rachel Crow, Melanie Amaro and Drew Ryniewicz. He has since added Piers Morgan, the newly departed judge on the Cowell-produced America's Got Talent; SyCo News, his production company; and One Direction, finalists on the U.K. version of The X Factor.

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He's now sent out a total of 10 tweets, primarily to talk about X Factor's Wednesday and Thursday's night episodes and to promote a Thursday night appearance at the Grove in Los Angeles. Though he did note in one message that he "love[s] being on Twitter."

He also engaged in a bit of friendly rivalry with Morgan, whom he called "delusional" as the two debated who had more viewers around the world and Morgan poked fun at the X Factor ratings as being a "big fat ZERO."

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Duran Duran's Simon LeBon also tweeted at Cowell: "I'm not going to follow you, I'm not going to follow you, I'm not going to follow you... well ok, yes I am."

X Factor's live performance episodes air at 8 p.m. Wednesdays on Fox, with the results show at 8 p.m. Thursdays.