Top 5 State Heads on Twitter

On Monday, Barack Obama personally joined twitter. Now he’ll tweet himself, not through his office staff. With just 3 tweets, the new account already has 1.53 million followers within 24 hours of him joining the site. His description reads: “Dad, husband, and 44th President of the United States”.

His first tweet was:

Hello, Twitter! It's Barack. Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account.

— President Obama (@POTUS) May 18, 2015

@WhiteHouse soon tweeted a picture of the President tweeting from his new account.

President Obama. In the Oval Office. Tweeting. #WelcomeToTwitter, @POTUS! http://t.co/SzWXltjNK0 pic.twitter.com/ce4DurwYXj

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 18, 2015

Bill Clinton welcomed Obama onboard with a question: “Does that username stay with the office? #askingforafriend”. The President promptly replied:

Good question, @billclinton. The handle comes with the house. Know anyone interested in @FLOTUS?

— President Obama (@POTUS) May 18, 2015

That was Obama. Here’s a list of the Top 5 most popular State heads on Twitter.

1. Barack Obama: @Barack Obama tops the list. He’s the most followed leader on Twitter with over 13.5k tweets and close to 60 million followers. One of the first leaders to wake up to the Twitter revolution, he joined as early as March 2007. The account is run mutually by the Organizing for Action Staff and Obama himself. His personal tweets are marked ‘-bo’. His new account’s already a rage. The account name reads President Obama, and the Twitter handle @POTUS makes us wonder how ‘personal’ it’s really going to be.



2. David Cameron: The UK Prime Minister is nowhere close to the top when it comes to followers. He has two twitter handles: @Number10gov and @David_Cameron. The first has around 3.3 million followers. It’s his official handle. His personal tweets are signed ‘PM:’. The later, though personal, serves as on announcement channel for his political exploits. This one has just over a million followers.


3. Narendra Modi: India’s Prime Minister @NarendraModi has seen a meteoric rise from 5 to 12 million followers in just a year since he took office. The Prime Minister’s official handle @PMOIndia now has over six million followers. He is now the third most followed leader on Twitter. Surely Modi’s social media team has served him well during the elections and after that.


4. S.B. Yudhonoyo: The Indonesian President is not far behind when it comes to numbers. His account has a whooping 7.04 million followers. However, if you want to catch up to him, you better learn some Indonesian.


5. Recep Tayyip Erdogan: The President of Turkey has 6.4 million followers and counting. Some say this might have some connection to his outrageous statements, and the country’s strategic position in the Yemen crisis.


(Image Credits: Twitter)