Narendra Modi World's 2nd Most-Popular Leader on Facebook after Obama

WASHINGTON: Narendra Modi has the fastest growing Facebook page for any elected official in the world and is only second after U.S. president Barack Obama in terms of fan following of politicians, an official of the social networking website said.

"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 general 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 U.S. 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 percent) compared to Obama's 0.305 percent.

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.