Indian Prime Minister overtakes Indonesian President to become Twitter’s third most followed world leader

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has just become the third most followed world leader on Twitter.

With over 5.1 million Twitter followers, Modi has overtaken Indonesian President SB Yudhoyono (5.09 million) to reach the third spot. Modi is behind the Pope, who has a cumulative 14 million followers from nine Twitter accounts in different languages, and US President Barack Obama with 43.9 million followers.

Modi, who won the general election six weeks ago, joined Twitter in January 2009 and since then has been very active on Twitter and other social media platforms like Facebook, Google Plus, and various blogs. The Prime Minister’s first tweet after his May 16 election win set a new Twitter record in India after it got 40,000 retweets in the 45 minutes after it was posted.

His fondness for Twitter has led many other political figures in the country to sign up for the microblogging site. Even the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, recently joined Twitter.

See: Facebook hits a major milestone, now has 100 million active users in India

In recent years, most Indian government organizations and agencies, including the India Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of External Affairs, use social media platforms extensively.

Engaging on Facebook too

It’s not just one-way communication. Regular people, members of the press, and many others are interacting with government agencies and officials very openly without any kind of political curbs. This is in contrast to what happened under the previous Indian government, which was accused of blocking about 12,000 Twitter accounts from following and interacting, according to media reports.

The use of social media by Barack Obama during the US elections in 2008 had a great impact and influence on the Indian political scene, say some observers.

Yesterday Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg met Modi and expressed her thoughts on how effectively the PM used Facebook as a direct communication channel with people during the general election.

About Rs 400 to 500 crore (US$67 million to $84 million) was spent by Indian political parties on digital platforms during the recent elections, according to a study by ASSOCHAM.