Twitter is the
preferred channel for
quick banter for over
175 million users
around the world
including our political
leaders. Over half of
the heads of states
and governments of
the G20 meeting in
Seoul on November 11
and 12 have an
official Twitter
account ( http://
twitter.com/Davos/
G20).
Some like
@BarackObama have
5.5 million followers,
while others such as
the French Presidency
only have 6,600. All
other G20 leaders
are somewhere in
between and yes,
you
guessed it, none of
them tweet
personally.
What
interesting though is
not who has the most
followers, but rather
who follows who.
Grand master in the
art of political tweets
@BarackObama
ranks fifth in the
world and mutually
follows his Russian
counterpart Dmitry
Medvedev
@KremlinRussia_E who
sent his first tweet in
late June. The Russian
president is very
active, especially
Twitpicing, and now
has over 160,000
followers on his English
and Russian accounts
combined.
The @KremlinRussia_E
and the @WhiteHouse
both follow UK Prime
Minister David
Cameron
@Number10gov. These
three could actually
conduct a direct and
secret Twitter
diplomacy in 140
characters literally
spelling
end of those red
phones that have
been sitting around
for so
long
as Barack Obama
recently joked.
However, only London
and Moscow follow
Canada
@PMHarper who
@BarackObama and
the @WhiteHouse seem
to ignore. But it gets
worse! None of the
big four follow the
other G20 members
on Twitter. Neither is
following @DilmaBR,
the new president of
Brazil, nor
@JuliaGillard, the
Prime Minister of
Australia or the
presidents of Korea
@BluehouseKorea,
France @Elysée,
Mexico
@FelipeCalderon, South
Africa
@PresidencyZA or
Turkey
@cbAbdullahGul.
At the Franco-British
summit last Tuesday
@Number10gov started
to follow the @Elysée
Palace which had not
immediately
reciprocated. In fact
the French Presidency
is following no one
and therefore Nicolas
Sarkozy cannot have
a private
conversation with his
peers on Twitter.
And finally, for the
record: while the
Russian and Mexican
presidents tweeted
public
congratulations to the
new Brazilian
president on her
recent election win,
neither had the
foresight to actually
follow her. Only
exception:
Venezuela
President Hugo
Chavez
@ChavezCandanga
who talked to Dilma
Rousseff on the phone
and immediately
started following her.
During the G20
summit in Seoul
follow the official
Twitter channel http://
twitter.com/
g20seoulsummit or read
the 140 character
diplomacy on the
World Economic
Forum
G20 Twitter list:
http://twitter.com/
Davos/G20.
Matthias Lüfkens
( @Luefkens) is Head of
Social Networks at
the World Economic
Forum, He is an
occasional
contributor to the
Swiss-French
magazine Bilan
( www.bilan.ch) and
blogs in French at
http://
lufkens.wordpress.co
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