“I get most of my news from Twitter.”
No, not me – someone I was listening to on a podcast…someone highly educated, articulate, respected. Perhaps someone who isn’t the world’s deepest thinker or has an attention span of only 140 characters.
I don’t spend much time on Twitter, and the selection of people I follow is a bit narrow. Someone I urgently recommend is the Pope.
Pope Francis has more than 35 million followers on his Twitter accounts in nine languages, according to Vatican Radio.
The numbers for the various languages: 13.6 million in Spanish, 12.1 million in English, 4.52 million in Italian, 2.79 million in Portuguese, 894,000 in Polish, 854,000 in French, 825,000 in Latin, 472,000 in German, 378,000 in Arabic.
The @Pontifex account, opened by Pope Benedict XVI on Dec. 3, 2012, is among the most followed in the world and the one that records the most retweets. Since March 19, 2015, Pope Francis is also present on Instagram with the account @Franciscus, which has recently exceeded 4 million subscribers.
Among world leaders, the Holy Father is in the top spot, following closely by US President Donald Trump. The world’s Twitter leader is singer Katy Perry, with more than 100 million followers.
As you may have heard, there is a good deal of political warfare waged on Twitter. You don’t to be on Twitter to know what President Trump tweets; it is reported everywhere. It tends to generate conversation.
At the other end of the spectrum are the pop stars like Katy Perry. I don’t follow Miss Perry, but I checked her Twitter page and quickly learned that she is a woman who has trouble deciding her favorite hair color. And I learned which other pop star she was riding with on a motorcycle.
Obviously, Twitter can give you a full range from political name-calling to vapid fan gossip.
But check out the Pope – he brings you the real Word.
