NEARLY 32m people follow Lady Gaga on Twitter; just behind her is fellow popstar Justin Bieber.
Of the top 10 users, eight are celebrities, from Kim Kardshian to Taylor Swift and Rihanna.
Only Barack Obama, with 24m followers and YouTube (20m) break the mould.
Where, therefore, will the Pope’s new account, @pontifex, get to in the rankings?
His closest religious rival on Twitter is the Dalai Lama.
His 5 million followers put him below Ryan Seacrest, FC Barcelona, Tyra Banks, Paulo Coelho, Russell Brand
and a range of celebrities so famous you’ve almost certainly never
heard of them.
Let's hope it's quality, not quantity of followers that
count.
If we assume that the distribution of Buddhist access to
technology is, on average, similar to that of Catholics’, then at the
very most one in a hundred followers have chosen to follow the Dalai
Lama. By some counts there are 2bn Buddhists around the world, taking
the numbers to one in 400.
If we assume that the same proportion
of the 1.25bn Catholics follow the Pope, he’ll come in at number 22 with
12.5m. Just behind Eminem.
Of
course, mapping number of Catholics directly to number of followers is
totally inexact, but it produces a far more optimistic estimate than
bookmakers Ladbroke's suggestions that they’ll offer odds on the Pope
getting over a million Twitter faithful by the end of the year.
Given
that he already has over 500,000 followers, it might be worth placing a
bet today.
A stark reminder of the challenges facing the Pope,
however, comes from his current official news channel on twitter -
@newsva_en has just 1,225 followers, even though this was the account
used to send Benedict’s first tweet.
Ian Maude, of Enders Analysis, says that “The Pope’s going to be enormous, but I’m not sure he’s quite going to get to Lady Gaga levels.”
He
points out that “The demographics of the most faithful might be older
and therefore less likely to be on Twitter, so there’s quite a lot
stacked against the Pope.”
But he adds that, of course, Twitter
is now a force for rather more than simply the trivial.
As a major
platform followed by the media around the world, Benedict’s tweets will
carry more weight than most of Gaga’s. “I’m guessing Pope Benedict’s tweets won’t be as casual as Lady Gaga, tweeting where she’s just landed,” he says.
The
pontiff will tweet in eight languages, starting on 12 December,
initially responding live to questions about faith during his weekly
general audience, the Vatican has said.
The 85-year-old’s Twitter
handle means both Pope in Latin and bridge builder, but it will be a
struggle to reach most Catholics, especially the burgeoning populations
in the developing world. And as Maude puts it, while many Twitter users
will follow the Pontiff out of curiosity, for the majority “it will be a
Christian thing”.
“He’s got a bigger overall fan base than Lady Gaga – but it’s whether that will translate to Twitter,” he says.
With 11,000 Facebook fans and 35,000 subscribers of YouTube,
the Pope is clearly a star, but not one whose appeal will translate
immediately to the social media world that he blessed in January 2011.
Twitter’s
Claire Diaz Ortiz, told Vatican Radio “As a company it’s important for
us to have influential leaders and the Pope is perhaps the most
important religious leader in the world who’s joining our platform.
We’ve seen great work done by other religious leaders in terms of what
it means to reach so many people, so we’re eager and hopeful the Pope
will be able to connect with believers and non-believers alike.”
The success of author Paolo Coelho,
indeed, demonstrates that interesting content, rather than global fame
or power, can also encourage huge numbers of followers. With that,
perhaps, the Vatican might consider upgrading the status of the account.
Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, the president of the Vatican’s social
communications office, has said the papal tweets aren’t to be considered
infallible teachings. They’re just “pearls of wisdom” in the Pope’s own
words, he said.
Back in his January proclamation, entitled “Truth, Proclamation and Authenticity of Life
in the Digital Age,” Pope Benedict said “I would like to invite
Christians, confidently and with an informed and responsible creativity,
to join the network of relationships which the digital era has made
possible.”
His own debut will no doubt encourage more to do so, but his
place in the modern world, certainly as represented on Twitter, is
unlikely to eclipse a global culture of celebrity worship.