Twitter Followers: Barack Obama = 100 Million, Donald Trump = Only 48 Million
Most people believe that Trump is misusing the microblogging platform to tell lies and spread hatred among different groups of people by writing his tweets in an indisciplined manner.
By Rakesh Raman
The former U.S. President Barack Obama has become the first politician in the world to touch the 100 million mark for Twitter followers.
Now Obama (@BarackObama) has almost twice the number of Twitter fans than the Twitter-addict President Donald Trump. As Obama believes that Twitter is not the right discussion platform to present your thoughts, he – unlike Trump – rarely uses Twitter.
Most people believe that Trump is misusing the microblogging platform to tell lies and spread hatred among different groups of people by writing his tweets in an indisciplined manner.
[ Also Read: How Trump Uses Twitter to Influence the Courts ]
It is also observed that Trump is using the social media site as a distraction tool to hoodwink his gullible supporters who may be interested to know about his secret deals with the enemy nation Russia.
Although Trump claims that he has over 110 million social media followers, this may also be one of the several Trump lies. In fact, you can buy social media – including Twitter – followers at the rate of peanuts from the online follower suppliers.
Most of these followers are fake. They only appear as a number on the user profile – like 48M on Trump’s @realDonaldTrump Twitter profile. They are not real people. The follower sellers create these fake profiles and sell them to users at very cheap rates.
[ Also Read: Blocked Twitter Users File Lawsuit Against President Trump ]
These fake followers do not interact with a user’s tweets, as it is happening on Trump’s account. You can see that the average interactions with Trump’s tweets are roughly 100K, although he claims that he has 48 million Twitter followers. Where are the others? Why don’t they interact with Trump’s tweets?
Moreover, what is this 110 million figure that Trump quotes about the number of his social media followers? This is again a misleading figure. These are overlapping profiles, which cannot be counted.
[ Also Read: Most Admired Persons: Obama, Hillary Beat Trump in Gallup Poll ]
For example, if a person follows Trump on Twitter as well as Facebook, Trump counts them as 2 followers. But actually it is only one person. However, this lie is small as compared to the whoppers that Trump has been telling.
It is possible that Trump is giving inflated numbers of his social media followers because he is still suffering from an inferiority complex after losing to Hillary Clinton by about 3 million popular votes in the 2016 presidential election.
Now, Trump will be further shocked to know that his predecessor Barack Obama has 100 million Twitter followers and gets millions of interactions as compared to a few thousand that Trump gets.
Happy Valentine’s Day, @MichelleObama. You make every day and every place better. pic.twitter.com/aWvyytR7Mm
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 14, 2018
In the overall Twitter celebrity list, Barack Obama comes at No. 3, behind Katy Perry (109 million followers) and Justin Bieber (105 million followers).
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.
