PM Modi has more followers on Twitter than White House

New Delhi, June 25: Indian Prime Minister

, who is the fifth most "followed" world leader on

, has overtaken the

in terms of number of followers on the micro blogging site.

While PM Modi has 4,984,379 followers, the White House has 4,980,910 followers.

A study conducted by global public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller earlier had revealed that US President Barack Obama is the most followed leader on Twitter (43.7 million) followed by Pope Francis, Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, The White House and Modi.

According to the study, Pope Francis has 14.09 million and Yudhoyono has 5.06 million followers.

Turkey's President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are at the sixth and seventh place, respectively. They each have more than 4 million followers each.

US President Barack Obama is the most followed leader on Twitter

The study said the "meteoric rise" of Mr Modi and the Indonesian President shows that leaders of the most populous countries have a clear advantage in garnering "a large army of dedicated followers".

The number of followers of a country's leader has even become a question of national pride, it added.

Earlier this month, Burson-Marsteller analysed 645 government accounts in 161 countries. Only 32 countries, mainly across Africa and Asia-Pacific regions, did not have any Twitter presence.

The study also revealed that more than 83 per cent of all United Nations (UN) governments have a presence on Twitter, and two-thirds (68 per cent) of all heads of state and government have personal Twitter accounts.

Eight world leaders have seen some of their tweets retweeted more than 24,000 times, reflecting major announcements and historic events, it said.

These include tweets like "India has won! The conquest of India. Good days are ahead", Malaysian Prime Minister's tweet about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the abdication tweet of the King of Spain and even more trivial Sochi Olympics bet between Canada's Stephen Harper and Barack Obama.

PTI