Indonesian President Now #1 Asian Nation Leader on Twitter (And Has Lots of Parody Accounts Too)

Image source credit: berita.upi.edu

Since the Indonesian president joined Twitter as @SBYudhoyono just 11 days ago, his official account has now reached 1.56 million followers. With that number, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) now effectively becomes the number one Asian nation leader on Twitter, beating the previous most-followed in the region, Philippine president Benigno Aquino III (now 1.46 million). The Malaysian prime minister (1.49 million) has also passed Aquino to take second place.

It has been spotted that there’s a great resemblance between President Yudhoyono’s Twitter cover picture and that of the number one world leader on Twitter, US president Barack Obama. Is it a coincidence? Probably not. Check it out:

@sbyudhoyono vs @barackobama | @jr_adin: cemungut eaa.. Kok sama kayak punya pakle obama.. twitter.com/jr_adin/status…

— KOTA BALIKPAPAN (@kotabalikpapan) April 13, 2013

Here come the jokers

With the huge growth in SBY’s Twitter followers, now there are several fake SBY accounts popping up, perhaps trying to get a few unaware Twitter users to follow them, or perhaps just to entertain with a little satire. The biggest presidential parody accounts are @SBYudonono ¹ and @SBYudhoyno

While the first parody Twitter account tweets occasional political jokes and brands itself as “Pak Nono,” the latter account tries to make its tweets look as if they come from the president. This rogue account sometimes makes formal greetings to Indonesian citizens, and at other times jokes around, such as advising followers who are not in a relationship to not get ‘friendzoned’ by their crushes on the weekend. Those accounts have gained 28,000 and 26,000 followers respectively.

One other genuine SBY-related Twitter account worth mentioning is @PresidenSBY which was created in 2008. This account tweets about the president’s formal activities and has received over 150,000 followers.

Outright imposters

There are also accounts that look to impersonate (but not parody) the original SBY account, such as @SBYudhoyonox, @SBYudhoyono0, and @SBYudhoyono2day. These imposters all claim to be the president’s official accounts, and copy the original tweets made by SBY. @SBYudhoyonox also slips in its own tweets like asking followers if they think the national exam should be abolished. It seems the owners of the latter two accounts have given up on continuing their effort, as @SBYudhoyono0 has only made three tweets, while @SBYudhoyono2day stopped tweeting a couple of days ago. The three of them have 11,000, 7,000, and 4,500 followers respectively.

There are also other SBY-related accounts which are not active, but still gain quite a number of followers. These are @SBYudoyono which has posted zero tweets but has over 13,000 followers, and @SBYudhoyono_ which was created as early as 2011, made five tweets, and has around 5,800 followers.

Indonesia is definitely very social, especially on Twitter, but some users are proving to be a bit clueless in following these low quality, fake accounts. Remember folks, there is only one verified account for the Indonesian president, which is the one that was greeted on Twitter by porn star Vicky Vette.