It turns out that even world leaders are beginning to feel the pressure to join Twitter (News - Alert). The Digital Policy Council (DPC) has just released a report showing that 80 percent of world leaders used Twitter in 2013. While many of these accounts are no doubt run by staff members, the fact that these leaders are at least being briefed on their account activity on the site is a great step for Twitter is proving that they’re useful in a real-world context.
The number one world leader on Twitter is U.S. President Barack Obama, who has 40 million Twitter followers and counting. That’s just eight million fewer than Katy Perry and 36 million more than the number two world leader, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, known as SBY.
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Considering that 80 percent of world leaders being on Twitter constitutes a fairly significant saturation of the market, it’s worth taking a look at which dignitaries have yet to join the site. Twitter has been blocked from China since 2009 in favor of a highly censored government-run alternative site, Sina Weibo. It goes without saying that political leaders in China are not on Twitter, as a result.
The DPC expects as many as 90 percent of world leaders to be on Twitter in 2014. What seems like a more vital statistic, though, may be how often these leaders interact with their constituents. As Mayor of Newark, Cory Booker was known to personally respond to requests made via Twitter regarding potholes in the street and stop lights that may have been malfunctioning, getting the details and sending out road crews to fix the issues.
That sort of interaction could be a game changer in the world of public service: offering the voting public a direct line to leaders, in public view for all constituents to see.
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