Geneva: President Donald Trump has passed Pope Francis to become the most-followed world leader on Twitter, a social media tracker says.
Twitplomacy says Trump, with about 40 million followers, over the weekend took the top spot on its tracked list of about 890 accounts of leaders like heads of state and government. The pope's followers in all languages are slightly fewer.
Twitplomacy founder Matthias Luefkens, head of digital with Burson Marsteller EMEA, acknowledged that many followers could be dormant accounts or "bots." The list also doesn't count ex-leaders like Barack Obama, who has 95 million-plus followers.
Trump has frequently announced government policy or made controversial statements on Twitter.
Luefkens said Wednesday that Trump's tweets get many "interactions" and he expects the US leader might trumpet the achievement: "He does like his crowd size."
Trump has used Twitter as a platform for major policy announcements as well as for spontaneous, and sometimes incendiary, remarks on various topics.
In the past week, debate has swirled over whether Trump's tweeting about North Korea — including a comment where he said its leader "won't be around much longer" violated Twitter's terms of service banning threats of violence.
Observers say the US president's fondness for Twitter diplomacy is creating a situation ripe for dangerous misunderstandings as he pursues an increasingly personal row with Kim Jong-Un.
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