Twitter when it started in 2006, was essentially a micro-blogging site with a 140-character limit to present your thoughts, ideas or any other news. It grew rapidly into a social media site by 2012 and over the years it is only growing. In November 2017, the character limit was doubled and increased to 280 characters, making it more accessible to people of all languages. Today, Twitter has become an excellent mouthpiece of celebrities, politicians, sportsmen around the world. It adds on a personal connect with all your followers on your smartphone. Towards the end of 2017, Twitter India announced a list of most followed people.  And we are not surprised our Prime Minister Narendra Modi tops that list!

Modi’s Twitter account has seen 52% increase in his follower base compared to 2016. From 24.6 million followers in 2016, Modi had 37.5 million (as on December 5) followers. Given he is running our country’s governance it is likely that most people would want to know about his plans and policies. Although, many times he was talked more for his foreign tours.

Modi happens to be the only politician on this list which otherwise is populated by Bollywood stars. Given Indians’ fascination with Bollywood and its glitz, we are not surprised. In ranking, Amitabh Bachchan stood at the second position followed by the Khans of Bollywood, Shah Rukh and Salman. Among all the Bollywood actors we have Deepika Padukone, the only actress reigning with her follower count. The Padmavati actress is only female celebrity in the male-dominated top rankings in 2017.

This is also the first time we have two cricketers in the top 10 most followed people on Twitter, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli. Both of them have a huge increase in their follower count more than 50%. So, it is good to see our sportsmen too making the mark. Plus, with Virat Kohli’s marriage announcement, the number must have just widely gone up later. Others on the list were Akshay Kumar and Hrithik Roshan.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 26, 2017 04:38 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).