Narendra Modi overtakes White House on Twitter

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 has overtaken the White House on Twitter

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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