Modi crosses 10 million followers on Instagram

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi crossed 10 million followers on Instagram this week, continuing his reign as the most followed global leader on the social media platform.

The Prime Minister, who doesn’t follow anyone, has posted 152 pictures on his travels, meetings with other politicians, greetings to the nation on festivals and more recently, a #throwbackthursday photo.

In April this year, Modi was named the most followed leader on Instagram, by Twiplomacy, an organisation that looks into the social media usage of governments and international organisations.

US President Donald Trump was the second most followed world leader - he now has 7.8 million followers and has posted 2,472 pictures - and Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, emerged third with 4.9 million followers and 467 posts.

Modi (@narendramodi) joined Instagram on November 12, 2014. He shared his first photo from the 25th ASEAN Summit in Myanmar. His post read, “Hello World! Great being on Instagram. My first photo…this one from the ASEAN Summit.” His most recent post is from his visit to Kedarnath last week.

Modi also has pictures with world leaders like Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Japan PM Shinzo Abe and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, Indian actors like Akshay Kumar, and sports personalities like Sachin Tendulkar and the Indian women’s cricket team.

In April, Twiplomacy also found Modi to be the most effective world leader on Instagram. Each picture posted by him, at the time, averaged 223,000 interactions (comments and likes).

The Prime Minister, who has garnered a large following on other social media platforms as well, has 35.8 million followers on Twitter and over 42 million on Facebook.

Source: The Indian Express