Barack Obama Leads Twitter List With 117.7 Million Followers

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 13, 8:22AM EDT

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Barack Obama Leads Twitter List With 117.7 Million Followers — © Steffi Loos / Getty Images

Former President Barack Obama doesn’t tweet much, probably as little as once a day. However, he has more followers on Twitter than anyone else in the world. His total followers numbered 117.7 million, according to Brandwatch.

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@BarackObama describes himself as “Dad, husband, President, citizen” in that order. Most of his tweets recently have been about social justice. He has focused heavily on his optimism for the future, mostly based on the actions of young people:

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Like many of the most widely followed people or organizations on Twitter, the former president can reach tens of millions of people. No other conduit to the public has anywhere close to those figures.

The people who have the most followers after @BarackObama are an odd mix, mostly singers and entertainers. Second on the list, @justinbieber posts about social justice as well. However, many of his tweets are about the success of his songs, specifically on Spotify. Bieber had 111.7 million followers.

Singer Katy Perry ranks third with 108.5 million followers. She was, according to some sources, the first person to have 100 million followers.

Fourth on the list, Rihanna, had 96.8 million followers. She promotes clothing and cosmetics, as much as anything else.

In fifth place, singer Taylor Swift had 86.1 million followers. Recently she has tweeted about the need to take down the statues of Confederate generals.

Cristiano Ronaldo is sixth on the list and the top sports figure. He had 84.9 million followers. He tweets almost exclusively about his athletic prowess and family life. Many consider Ronaldo to be the best soccer player in the world. By many measures, it is the most popular sport worldwide.

Singer and movie star Lady Gaga ranks seventh on the list with 84.1 million followers.

Skipping down the list, Donald Trump had 80.1 million followers, which put him in ninth place

The highest-ranked media company is CNN Breaking News, with 57.7 million followers. That is good enough for 16th place.

Back at first place, Obama has been out of office since 2017. His public presence and popularity do not appear to have declined much, at least as measured by Twitter.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.