Obama’s New Twitter Inc Account The Fastest To Gain 1M Followers

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The Twitter account of U.S. President Barack Obama set a new world record when, within five hours, the account gathered over 1 million followers. Previously, this record was held by actor Robert Downey Jr., who hit 1 million followers in 23 hours and 22 minutes in April 2014, according to a representative from Guinness.

Twitter count nearing Clinton’s

It must be noted that this is not Obama’s first Twitter account. His personal account with the handle @Barack Obama has over 59 million followers.

Obama, who is the first sitting president to have a Twitter account, saw 1,213 followers being added every minute. Data scientist Jon Bruner conducted a study in 2013 concluding that an account having 1,200 followers is already at the 97th percentile of all active Twitter accounts.

What came as a surprise was the number of followers, coming in at 3,314 per minute in the afternoon, and when the one-millionth follower followed at 4:15 p.m. Eastern on Monday. Also there was a minute when the account gained 14,971 followers. Toward midnight, this number went down to 500 followers per minute, but it surged again in the morning.

Obama has over 1.96 million followers presently and is nearing Bill Clinton’s 3.5 million followers. However, Hillary Clinton scores marginally above Bill with 3.53 million followers.

Also Forbes covered the record breaking event every minute from 12 p.m. on Monday when the number of followers stood at 150,000. On Tuesday at the same time, it smashed 1.88 million followers.

Not the first Guinness record for Obama

Apart from the new one, Obama holds quite a few Guinness World Records. His Twitter account @Barack Obama has the highest number of followers compared to any other politician, and in 2009, he had the most heavily guarded and expensive presidential inauguration. Also the tweet by Obama after re-election in 2012 smashed three Guinness records by becoming the most widespread social network message in 24 hours and getting the highest number of likes on a Facebook item in 24 hours and the most likes on a Facebook item.

While Obama did break the record of reaching 1 million followers in the shortest span, he still has a long way to go before having the highest number of followers. Singer Katy Perry boasts the highest number of Twitter followers at almost 70 million. Singer Justin Bieber is at the second spot with 64 million followers, and at the third place is Obama’s other Twitter account with 59.3 million.

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