Narendra Modi third most followed world leader on Twitter: study

Berlin: In less than a year after assuming office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emerged as the third most followed world leader on the social networking site, topped by US President Barack Obama, according to a report released today.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is the most followed foreign minister on Twitter. "US President @BarackObama is still the most followed world leader, with close to 60 million followers but Pope Francis (@Pontifex) is catching up fast with close to 20 million followers on his nine language accounts," the annual Twiplomacy analysis of Twitter accounts released by PR firm Burson-Marsteller said.

"Since his election in late May 2014, India's Prime Minister @NarendraModi has skyrocketed into third place, surpassing Turkey?s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (@RT_Erdogan) and the @WhiteHouse with more than six million followers each," it said.

Modi had 10,902,510 followers till March 24. In terms of influence, Pope was the most effective. Prime Minister Modi was the fifth most influential leader preceded by Obama.

"The meteoric rise of the Indian Prime Minister and the large following of the Turkish President and the King of Saudi Arabia shows that leaders of the most populous countries and countries where Twitter penetration is high have a clear advantage in garnering a large army of dedicated followers," the report said.

"The number of followers of a country?s leader has in some cases become a question of national pride," it said. "Fifteen world leaders have seen some of their tweets retweeted more than 20,000 times, reflecting major announcements and historic events, such as @NarendraModi's election tweet: 'India has won! The conquest of India. Good days are ahead'," the report said.

Pope Francis, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, the US State Department, Prime Minister Modi, Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner,  Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro all appear on more than 10,000 Twitter lists.

Swaraj, who is the most followed foreign minister with 2,438,228 followers, was far ahead of Abdullah Bin Zayed, the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates (1,608,831 followers) and Turkey's Mevlut Cavusoglu with only 376,429 followers.