Trump doubles up as most followed world leader on Twitter

GENEVA: US President Donald Trump is by far the most followed world leader on Twitter, with the Pope trailing him by some 4.5 million followers, a study showed yesterday.

The number of Trump’s followers has “more than doubled since taking office”, the study authors said.

With more than 52 million followers, the úreal Donald Trump account also counts nearly 10 million more followers than thirdplace holder, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to the latest ‘Twiplomacy’ study by communications firm Burson Cohn Wolfe (BCW).

In terms of interactions with followers — in the form of likes and retweets — Trump’s lead is even more impressive, the study showed.

Over the past 12 months, the US president has had nearly 264.5 million interactions with his followers — more than five times more than runner-up Modi, and 12 times as many as Pope Francis, in third place.

However, in terms of retweets alone, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman easily dwarfs Trump.

Salman only tweeted 11 times between May 2017 and May 2018, but each of those tweets generated an average of 154,294 retweets, compared to just 20,319 retweets per Trump tweet, the study showed. — AFP