Obama is the most-followed world leader on Twitter by far, but other foreign leaders shouldn’t expect to be followed back by the U.S. president.
According to Burson-Marsteller’s annual Twiplomacy report, President Obama is the least-connected world leader on Twitter despite his large following. One-quarter of world leaders and governments on Twitter follow Obama, but @BarackObama has mutually connected with only two of them.
The study shows that more than three-quarters of United Nations’ member countries are currently on Twitter. @BarackObama and @WhiteHouse are followed by 148 and 132 other world leaders and governments, respectively. But between the two accounts, the only foreign powers they follow are the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the United Kingdom’s government, Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera.
Obama had 33,510,157 followers as of July 1, compared to the pope who came in second place with roughly 7 million followers. However, Obama’s tweets are not retweeted nearly as often as other world leaders, and he is not as conversational as others in replying to Twitter users.
Pope Francis was named the most influential Twitter user with an average of 11,116 retweets for every tweet he posts on his Spanish account and an average of 8,219 retweets for posts on his English account.
Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi was named the most conversational world leader, with 96 percent of his tweets being replies to other Twitter users.
Looking at the Twitterverse overall, Obama’s account is the fourth most popular – the President has not been able to surpass Justin Bieber, Katy Perry or Lady Gaga in followers.
