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Cricketers dominate Twitter in SA
22 May 2015
After Barack Obama's record breaking Twitter following I decided to check who rules the Twitter roost in South Africa. To my surprise, the top 30 largest (by number of followers) Twitter accounts in South Africa are dominated by cricketers.
Of the top 30 largest Twitter accounts, eight are current or former Proteas. There are also two international cricketers, Kevin Petersen at number three with 2.6 million followers, and New Zealand's Ross Taylor at number 30 with 553,000. I am not sure why these two feature, or what qualifies you to be on the SA list, but it may be that they opened their accounts while in SA.
Top of the cricketing pile and coming in at number four in SA, is AB de Villiers with 2.3 million+ followers. He is followed by the recently retired big dogs, Graeme Smith at 15 with 850,000 followers and Jacques Kallis at 16 with 783,000. The Morkel brothers both feature with Albie (19) outperforming Morne who is at number 28. Other cricketers include JP Duminy (20), Faf du Plessis (21) and Hashim Amla (23).
The politician with the largest following is Julius Malema, at number 17 with 766,000. I guess he is glad he never followed through with his 2010 threat to close down Twitter when he was still ANC Youth League president.
The only companies in the top 30 are all media outlets. News24 is at number seven, while SuperSport and SuperSport Blitz are 12 and 18 respectively. 5FM is at 25, while morning anchor DJ Fresh is at 14 and his predecessor Gareth Cliff is at number 11.
The biggest surprise, to me anyway, was number one Casper Lee, and number two, Troye Sivan. Lee is a bona fide social media celebrity, having built his audience with a highly watched YouTube channel. Troye Sivan is a SA born Australian actor who played Spud in the movies by the same name. I had to look that last one up.
No other sportspeople representing sports other than cricket feature in the top 30.
- 1 - Caspar_Lee Caspar Lee (@Caspar_Lee) - Followers 2,662,661
2- Troye Sivan (@troyesivan) - Followers 2,631,313
3 - Kevin Pietersen (@KP24) - Followers 2,589,411
4 - AB de Villiers (@ABdeVilliers17) - Followers 2,363,532
5 - Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) - Followers 2,277,496
6 - Pastor Chris (@PastorChrisLive) - Followers 1,362,136
7 - News24 (@News24) - Followers 1,187,683
8 - NelsonMandela (@NelsonMandela) - Followers 1,108,877
9 - Bonang B* Matheba (@bonang_m) - Followers 1,059,095
10 - Candice Swanepoel (@angelcandice) - Followers 1,019,635
11 - Gareth Cliff (@GarethCliff) - Followers 979,780
12 - SuperSport (@SuperSportTV) - Followers 933,234
13 - Minenhle Dlamini (@MinnieDlamini) - Followers 900,031
14 - DJ Fresh (Big Dawg) (@DJFreshSA) - Followers 888,670
15 - Graeme Smith (@GraemeSmith49) - Followers 849,868
16 - Jacques Kallis (@jacqueskallis75) - Followers 783,313
17 - Julius Sello Malema (@Julius_S_Malema) - Followers 766,242
18 - SuperSport Blitz (@SuperSportBlitz) - Followers 752,526
19 - Albie Morkel (@albiemorkel) - Followers 700,591
20 - JP Duminy (@jpduminy21) - Followers 691,671
21 - Faf Du Plessis (@faf1307) - Followers 688,143
22 - Helen Zille (@helenzille) - Followers 664,062
23 - Hashim Amla (@amlahash) - Followers 640,850
24 - PJ Black (@Justin__Gabriel) - Followers 623,215
25 - 5FM (@5FM) - Followers 604,735
26 - Dineo Ranaka (@DineoRanaka) - Followers 599,751
27 - DJZinhle (@DJZinhle) - Followers 595,556
28 - Morne Morkel (@mornemorkel65) - 581,966
29 - Loyiso Gola (@loyisogola) - Followers 579,013
List supplied by Social Bakers
