Tweets a lot: President Obama has more Twitter followers than any leader on the planet

The Digital Policy Council, a nonpartisan think tank, has analyzed the global tweeting realm to reveal that 82 percent of world leaders use Twitter, sending out their 140-character missives to a combined audience of 116 million followers.

“President Obama confidently retains the No. 1 spot with a vast following of 51 million. The U.S. president actually holds the third largest number of followers in the entire world exceeded only by ’fellow’ pop stars Justin Bieber and Katy Perry,” the research states. “Most of Obama’s activity is handled by his Organization for Action staff, though he occasionally sends out a message of his own (always signed - bo).” So far, Mr. Obama’s account has dispatched some 12,900 tweets.

Meanwhile, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes “the most stunning entry to the Top 10,” landing second behind Mr. Obama in the top-10 with nearly 9 million followers. Turkish President Recp Erdogan was in third place, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in fourth and Queen Rania of Jordan was in fifth place.

And of note: Out of a total of 94 nations classified as fully democratic, 84 of them have leaders who are Twitter friendly. This means that approximately 90 percent of the leaders of the world’s democracies tweet. Among those who don’t: Austria President Heinz Fischer and Denmark Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt. “In contrast, only 62 percent of non-democratic nations have leaders that tweet,” the report says.