Study: Obama most followed on Twitter, pope most influential

A new study shows U.S. President Barack Obama is still by far the most followed world leader on Twitter, but Pope Francis is considered the most influential by the number of his messages retweeted.

The annual Twiplomacy analysis of Twitter accounts released Tuesday by PR firm Burson-Marsteller shows nearly 57 million people following Obama, up from 44 million last year. Pope Francis was next with 19.5 million followers on nine language accounts, up from 14 million in 2014.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had nearly 11 million followers, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had more than 6 million, and the White House had almost 6 million followers.

Pope Francis' words were spread widest, with an average of 9,929 retweets per tweet, compared to Obama in fourth place with 1,210.