In a tight, non-politically driven race, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (5.01-million) has now overtaken the White House (4.99-million) in Twitter followers, to become the fifth-most followed politician in the world. Unlike the White House tweets, Modi sidelines quotes and instead concentrates on enacting positive change through his 140-word imposed limit.
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Had fruitful meetings with CMs & detailed presentations with Ministers & Officials. Together we will take India to greater heights.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 26, 2014
By way of comparison, here’s a typical White House tweet.
“Cynicism is popular these days, but hope’s better.” —President Obama — The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 26, 2014
These statistics, along with many others have been combined into a mega who’s who list of popular political figures and institutions, care of the Twiplomacy data-scraping tool and global PR firm Burson-Marsteller.
Modi uses Twitter as a power tool to broadcast his messages,” says the study, which also lists the top most followed politicians in the world including US President Barack Obama (43-million), Pope Francis (14-million) and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (5-million).
Modi’s new Twitter supremacy impresses and 643 twitter-loving political leaders worldwide are tearing up the social media sphere. More fun facts:
- PresidenciaMX, the twitter account of the Mexican Presidency, posts the most tweets per day with an average of 78
- There are 156 965 474 followers of all 643 political leader twitter accounts
- Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has the most followers in Latin America (2.9-million)
- Obama was the first political figure to sign up on Twitter, and sent his first tweet 5 March 2007 as the then, Illinois
- Few world leaders tweet personally, save for Finnish Prime Minister designate Alext Stubb, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Estonian President Toomas Henrik Ilves
- World leaders post on average, 4 tweets per day and as of June 2014, have tweeted a combined 1 932 002 times.
But what of Africa’s political figures? The infographic below outlines the strides African leaders have taken to connect with the little people.
