Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the sole non-Bollywood celebrity to make it into the top 10 most-followed Indians on Twitter in 2015, otherwise led by actor Amitabh Bachchan, the site said on Monday.
Bachchan had 18.1 million followers as of December 4, 2015, while Shah Rukh Khan was next with 16.5 million. Modi was ranked a close third with 16.4 million, while the 10th position was held by A.R. Rahman, with 9.5 million.
The other actors in the list include Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Deepika Padukone, Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra and Akshay Kumar, in that order.
Twitter also pointed out some interesting new accounts that were opened in 2015: The Taj Mahal, former cricketer Kapil Dev, Tamil actor Suriya, and even the Delhi Police Commissioner and Safe City India.
Twitter said while each tweet was unique, only one could be termed the ‘Golden Tweet’ of 2015 — a selfie taken by Shah Rukh Khan with former One Direction member Zayn Malik at the Asian Awards in London in April. It was retweeted 141,000 times and viewed 18.3 million times.
Twitter hashtag trends in India saw a mix of sports, entertainment, political and social activism movements. Led by #IPL (Indian Premier League), it was followed by #SelfieWithDaughter, #BiharResults, #SaalEkShuruaatAnek (Modi’s e-governance and digital diplomacy initiative) and #DDLJ20Years (20 years of the movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge).
The most influential moments were the Cricket World Cup #INDvsPAK, #DelhiElections, #HappyDiwali, #ChennaiRains and #IndependenceDay. The year also saw many firsts from users, partners and brands.
In November, Make in India — one of the largest economic development initiatives of the Indian government — became the first non-US brand to get its own Twitter emoji for a worldwide audience.
Given the millions of cricket fans in India, Twitter also created a special cricket timeline for the World Cup and Indian Premier League as a platform for tweets, commentary, expert analysis, photos and videos from the sidelines of one of the world’s biggest cricketing events.
From the corporate world, JetInstant was a first-of-its kind innovation that was introduced to help passengers check the lowest fares for Jet Airways or view a flight’s status with a single tweet.
Also introduced was SmartCare — a customer service allowing 120 million Reliance Communications users to access and manage their mobile phone accounts using the #SmartCare hashtag.
