Obama on top of 'twiplomacy' as Pope leads most influential

Among world leaders who engage in ''twiplomacy'' - the use of Twitter for diplomatic relations - President Barack Obama wins superlatives for the most followers but Pope Francis is the most influential, according to a new survey by global public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller.

It found that more than three-quarters of world leaders are on Twitter. And it seems everyone wants to keep up with the thoughts and activities of the US President, who has more than 34.5 million Twitter followers.

The study said all 45 European governments are on Twitter, and with the exception of Suriname, all Latin American countries are, too. In North America, 79 per cent of leading government officials have Twitter accounts. It falls off for Asia and Africa, where 76 per cent and 71 per cent of governments, respectively, use Twitter.

The study deemed Pope Francis most influential, based on the number of times people share his tweets - an average of 11,000 retweets per message on his Spanish-language account.
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Panama's President Ricardo Martinelli also had a recent Twitter scoop. On July 15, Mr Martinelli sent out the first picture of Cuban missile equipment found aboard a North Korean-flagged vessel that was seized before it could transit the Panama Canal.

''Panama captured a North Korean-flagged vessel coming from Cuba with an undeclared cargo of weaponry,'' he tweeted. ''The material was hidden under a shipment of sugar.''


/Smh.Com.Au/