India’s new PM Narendra Modi has overtaken the White House on Twitter, a study of political use of the social network has found.
Narendra Modi’s account @NarendraModi has 4.99 million followers, ahead of the @WhiteHouse account which has 4.98 million followers.
His huge victory in the recent general election was partly credited to a well-organized social media campaign.
Narendra Modi, leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is also the most followed Indian leader on Twitter.
“Mr. Modi’s seen a stratospheric rise,” said Matthias Luefkens, who heads the annual Twiplomacy, a study conducted by global public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller.
Although Narendra Modi speaks mostly in Hindi, his tweets are always in English, preferred for business in a nation with 22 official languages.
Narendra Modi, who was elected in May, scored 24,000 re-tweets for his own “India has won!” victory message.
“I am a firm believer in the power of technology and social media to communicate with people across the world,” Narendra Modi has said in a message on his new website.
The five most followed world leaders were President Barack Obama (@BarackObama) with 43 million followers of his campaign account, Pope Francis (@Pontifex) with 14 million followers on his nine different language accounts, Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (@SBYudhoyono) with 5 million followers, with @WhiteHouse and @NarendraModi in fourth and fifth places.
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