PM Modi may Outshine White House on Twitter
Published: 26th June 2014 08:54 AM | Last Updated: 26th June 2014 08:54 AM | A+A A-
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, presently the fifth most followed world leader on the microblogging site Twitter, may soon outshine the White House in terms of number of followers.
Twiplomacy, an annual study done by a global public relations and communications firm on such leaders’ presence in the social media, has held that the US President was the most followed world leader on Twitter, followed by Pope Francis and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. According to the study, Obama has 43.69 million followers, Pope Francis 14.09 million and Yudhoyono 5.06 million followers.
However, Modi is expected to surpass the White House within the next few days as the number of his followers has been growing since he was elected as Prime Minister. “Since his election in May 2014, Modi has become the fifth-most followed world leader on Twitter, with 4,956,244 followers,” the study said.
“He is expected to surpass the US White House account, with 4,973,061 followers, within the next few days. Modi is using Twitter as a power tool to broadcast his messages,” Twiplomacy added.
Modi was powered to the fifth place as his followers’ numbers have been growing day by day. He left behind Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the sixth and seventh place, respectively. They have more than four million followers each.
The study said the “meteoric rise” of Modi and Indonesian President shows that leaders of the most populous countries have a clear advantage in garnering “a large army of dedicated followers”, as the number of followers has even become a question of national pride.
Eight world leaders have seen some of their tweets retweeted more than 24,000 times, reflecting major announcements and historic events, it said.
These include tweets like “India has won! The conquest of India. Good days are ahead”, Malaysian Prime Minister’s tweet about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the abdication tweet of the King of Spain and even more trivial Sochi Olympics bet between Canada’s Stephen Harper and Barack Obama.