Avid Twitter user Donald Trump now has over 20 million followers on the platform. The President-elect has now hit a landmark that puts him above celebrities like Ed Sheeran and Coldplay, but it is still far less than Katy Perry and Barack Obama.
Image: FlickrTrump – a “Tweeter-in-chief”
Trump is the 68th most-followed user on Twitter, just ahead of Indian actor Aamir Khan and behind Canadian singer Avril Lavigne, according to the measuring tool TwitterCounter.
Trump’s aides have been keeping a close eye on the number, and they even cite his social media stats from time to time, says the Telegraph. They often add up the users who follow him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to claim that he reaches 46 million people through the three sites. That huge number, however, does include dormant users and robot followers as well (the bots), neither of which ever see his posts.
Despite the fact that Obama’s personal account has three times as many followers as Trump’s, the latter has been branded as the “Tweeter-in-chief.” Obama has about 80 million followers on his personal account and 13.5 million users on the official White House @POTUS account. But Obama is an irregular user of Twitter and Trump is a daily user. Katy Perry, with 95.3 million followers, is the most-followed user on Twitter.
Will continue to use Twitter
Trump uses Twitter – his favorite communications platform — to respond to disputes, news coverage about him and slights. The President-elect’s tweets are known for being controversial and are regularly littered with capital letters, which, if you do not know, signifies shouting on social media.
Previously, when he was asked if he would switch to the official Twitter account for the President of the United States, Trump said, “I think, I’ll keep it … so I’ve got 46 million people right now – that’s a lot, that’s really a lot – but 46 million – including Facebook, Twitter and ya know, Instagram so when you think that your 46 million there, I’d rather just let that build up and just keep it @realDonaldTrump, it’s working.”
Trump said he will continue to use his personal account to tweet when he takes office because he is covered dishonestly by the press. Trump has disclosed that he dictates some of his tweets to staff, who then type the tweets out. He told 60 Minutes after election day that he was going to be very “restrained” on Twitter once taking office. However, this doesn’t appear to be the plan anymore, as he takes office in only three days.
