Pope Less Popular on Twitter Than Charlie Sheen? Conan?

By Jo Piazza Posted Jun 29th 2011 02:35PM

Pope Benedict XVI entered the twitterverse yesterday with his very first iPad tweet sent from on high. The holy message? Hawking his new online Vatican news organization.

"Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI," he tweeted.

The Pope, unlike the Dalai Lama, does not have a personal Twitter account, as of yet. Instead he has been using the Vatican's official Tweet feed (@news_va_en) -- a feed that can expect a bump in popularity now that it is the Pope's official portal to the digital universe.

As of this morning, the Vatican's English language Twitter was gaining approximately 1,424 followers per hour, according to PopEater's calculations. That's not nearly as rapid a pace as celebrity accounts like those of Charlie Sheen or talk show host, Conan O'Brien, both of whom joined Twitter as part of separate media melees.

On Sheen's first day using the social networking site (with the help of the pay-per-tweet company Ad.ly), he was gaining approximately 30,000 followers per hour. O'Brien similarly experienced a follower velocity of approximately 40,000 per hour on his first day.

So what gives? Why is the Pope getting less love?

Catholics, of which there are about 1.1 billion in the world, are definitely on Twitter. In fact the micro-blog is an incredibly dynamic space for religious conversation. I recently conducted research on how Catholic nuns use Twitter. Over the course of one month, the 14 women in my study tweeted a total of 2,531 times. That's a sizable amount of twittage. The Catholic Church has even recognized that social media can be a useful tool through which to convey their message to a large (young) audience and has made much of sanctioning its use.

In his May 2010 message for World Communication Day, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged priests to use social media: "Using new communication technologies, priests can introduce people to the life of the Church and help our contemporaries to discover the face of Christ," he decreed. "They will best achieve this aim if they learn, from the time of their formation, how to use these technologies in a competent and appropriate way."

Of the top 40 Twitter users (based on number of followers), 36 are celebrities -- a group, one would think, the Pope would be a part of. Perhaps the Pope's fans are simply just taking longer to engage with the Holy Father on a digital level. Maybe folks are wary that his first tweet was a one-time only deal. Maybe the Pope needs to come up with sexier hashtags.

For now, it remains surprising that access into Benedict's tweet world seems to be less intriguing than access to the inner sanctum of #TigerBlood.

Comments

(18)

Wednesday 29 June

By JEFF

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Abstinence makes the church grow fondlers.......

By jam

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How funny

Thursday 30 June

By jaguar8450

Abstinence smastince. Your catholic pedophile priests and catholic die hard child molesters would rather diddle a little boy or girl than sit there and type away at a keyboard to access the internet or the popes twitter account.

By plz

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Let's see, he sent his first tweet yesterday right? And how long have sheenless and bogyman been on twitter twatting? What a stupid article.

By Rothgeb

Pope is smart enough to keep his mouth shut... Really can't say same for other 2...

By bbursky

His Hole-ley-ness is trying to undo the worrk of Pope John the only really Cristian pope in centuries
of course the fashist tea party loves him.

By Sondbr

Why would it be a surprise that people in pop culture would be more popular on Twitter than the Pope?? The whole world isn't Catholic and most people on Twitter are quite young, so could care less about the old Pope. I'm old and I could care less about the Pope!!

By pope-a-zao!

pop culture > pope culture

By Eleanor Peters

FTER THE EVIL SCANDAL OF THE PEDOFILES IN THE cATHOLIC CHURCH, THAT THEY COVERED UP FOR YEARS, WHY WOULD ANY ONE CARE ABOUT pOPE bENEDICT ? hE KNEW IT. tHE CARDINALS KNEW IT. THE BISHOPS KNEW IT, BUT NOTHING WAS DONE. nOTHING IS STILL NOT BEING DONE. NOT REALLY. pRIESTS ARE SILL BEING CAUGHT. tHIS SCANDAL DEEPLY EFFECTEED MY FAITH IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. nOTE i SAY IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND NOT OUR lORD, jESUS CHRIST, WHO IS STILL MY SAVIOR. hE WOULD GO INTO THE vATICAN AND THROW POPE bENEDICT AND ALL OTHERS WHO KNEW AND COVERED IT OUT, RIGHT OUT OF THE BACK DOOR. YES THERE ARE GOOD PRIESTS. bUT THEY ARE PUT UNDER A RULE OF OBEDIENCE SO THEY CANNOT TELL ANY ONE. pOPE bENEDCT BETTER DO AS oUR lADY OF fATIMA ASKS OR PEACE AND HONESTY IN THE CHURCH WILL NEVER HAPPEN. wHY IS HE NOT DOIINNG WHAT SHE ASKED ? tHE WORLD IS GETTING MORE EVIL AND WILL COTINUE TO DO EVEN MORE IF THIS pOPE DOES NOT OPEN HIS EYES TO THE TRUUTH OF oURlADY, AND HER MESSAGE. hE HAS FAILED HER. SO HE HAS FAILED US.

By Polar Patrol

Please learn how to operate that pesky Caps Lock key before you post again.

By selena

Well duh...

By Mike

A dying religion the catholic church, but not soon enough.

By carm

thats because people prefer sex,drugs and sin over a good decent life. go back to GOD people. you see everything that is happening in the world today? all the natural disasters? the way the economy is? becaus man has gotten greedy! always wanting more! PRAY! GO BACK TO GOD!

By cat7471

shut the hell up

WITHOUT god IN YOUR LIFE, YOU ARE NOTHING. tELEVISION WAS THE DOWNFALL OF MORALS. lOOK ATYOUR FAMILLY LIF AND WAY OF LIFE. dISGUSTING.fAST LIFE, FAST DECLINE OF MORALS AND THE WORLD. GOD HELP US ALL.

By Titan

This Pope and his church are about as popular as Cancer. That's why thousands are leaving the church every day.

By sautieri

yeah catholic priests are the only perverts.not someones father,uncle, brother,teacher or school janitor.everyone says leave the church out of everything! so leave it out!

i can sense you are not a religious person cat7471.
dont blame the world for the bad choices you have made in life.
God hasnt forgotten you. he is there. you just need to let him in.

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