This article was published on May 18, 2015

President Obama’s most influential Twitter followers: YouTube stars beat Biden


President Obama’s most influential Twitter followers: YouTube stars beat Biden

President Obama fired up the @Potus Twitter account for the first time earlier today and, with one tweet, he’s already rocketing towards a million followers, at the time of writing.

I used follower analytics tool SocialRank to take a look at who’s amongst the initial influx. It’s good news for YouTube stars, but not so flattering for Vice President Biden.

Screenshot 2015-05-18 18.21.28

Unsurprisingly, the official Whitehouse Twitter account is Obama’s most influential follower, but it’s striking to see three YouTube personalities in the top 10 – Brit Alfie Deyes, American Tyler Oakley and the much less well-known (and followed) Russian singer Sasha Spilberg.

The rest of the list is made up of Barcelona defender Gerard Piqué (who has over 10.6 million followers), singer Solange Knowles (sister of Beyoncé), basketball legend Scottie Pippen, soul singer John Legend, Glee actor Darren Criss and the Smithsonian Museum.

Screenshot 2015-05-18 18.47.24

Biden secures 14th place o the President’s most influential follower list after two more YouTube stars – The Fault In Our Stars author John Green and BBC Radio 1 presenter Phil Lester – and a Brazilian news site. Bad luck, Joe.

SocialRank’s co-founder and CEO Alex Taub says its Most Valuable Follower measure shows an account’s “most in-demand, important and potentially useful followers” and takes into account many data points including “reach, verified status and how many tweets they post per day.”

Update: FLOTUS has taken her rightful place as POTUS’ most valuable follower and someone at Marvel is seriously on their game…

Screenshot 2015-05-18 20.59.36

Read next: President Obama follows the wrong David Cameron on Twitter 

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