'Modi's Facebook popularity second only to Obama'

Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi has the fastest growing Facebook page for any elected official in the world and is only second after United States President Barack Obama in terms of fan following of politicians, an official of the social networking website said on Tuesday.

"Modi continues to have the fastest growing page (for the last day, week and month) of any politician or elected official worldwide," Andy Stone from Facebook policy communications told PTI.

On April 7, the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections, Modi had 12.46 million fans on the Facebook. Today, when he was appointed by President Pranab Mukherjee as the next Prime Minister of the country, it had jumped to 15.245 million fans.

After US President Barack Obama, who has over 40 million fan following on Facebook, Modi is the second most popular politician in the world.

It is only during this election cycle, that he crossed Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential candidate, who now has 11.345 million fan following.

Modi, however, has greater growth rate on Facebook (1.171 per cent) compared to Obama's 0.305 per cent.

On the day of counting, mentions of Modi saw an increase of seven times.

The general election which concluded with the BJP getting a majority in the Parliament, has seen a record growth in Facebook pages in India, Stone said.

"Since elections were called on March 5th, Facebook users in India have been engaging with their friends, the candidates and political parties to discuss the 2014 Lok Sabha elections," Stone said.

From the day elections were announced to the day polling ended, 29 million people in India made 227 million interactions (posts, comments, shares, and likes) regarding the Indian elections on Facebook.

That is two-thirds of all daily active Facebook users in India and an average of 10 interactions per person. In addition, 13 million people made 75 million interactions regarding Modi, Stone said.

On each day of the polling, Facebook ran a megaphone to people in India letting them know it was Election Day and encouraging them to share that they voted. This megaphone was seen by over 31 million people, Stone said.

Moreover, the candidates and political parties saw a large amount of interactions on their Facebook pages.

"During the election, Modi became the second most-liked politician on Facebook behind only Obama and Arvind Kejriwal also joined the ranks of the top five liked politicians globally," the Facebook official said.

Image: A grab of Narendra Modi's Facebook fan page