Saudi king trumps the Donald on Twitter

DONALD Trump may be lighting up Twitter with strange new words and attacks on allies, but in the battle for most attention per tweet, the US president is losing.

The world leader whose tweets generate the most retweets is Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, according to the latest Twiplomacy study by communications firm Burson-Marsteller.

In terms of output, there is no contest: the Saudi king tweeted only 10 times during the period covered by the study — April 2016 to May 20 this year. But those tweets were each retweeted more than 147 000 times on average, dwarfing Trump’s 13 100 average retweets per tweet, the study found.

“He [King Salman] posts exclusively in Arabic and without any visuals, but every tweet is a digital home run,” said the report, which was based on the analysis of 856 official and personal Twitter accounts of leaders in 178 countries.

But retweets are only one measure of influence on the social media platform, and Trump is gaining ground elsewhere. With the internet poking fun at his use of the word “covfefe” this week, the report found that @realDonaldTrump could be the most-followed account of a world leader by August. Pope Francis is in the lead at the moment with a combined 33 716 301 followers over his nine language accounts. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is third with 30 058 659. — AFP