A STUDY of Twitter.com trends has shown that more than a third of Malaysian users follow Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

Khairy’s account is only the second most followed in Malaysia, behind that of popular photo-sharing application Instagram.

The study, conducted by Politweet.org, said Khairy was by far the most followed local politician.

Second behind the Umno Youth chief is Prime Minister Najib Razak (No. 7 overall), followed by PKR’s jailed leader, Anwar Ibrahim (61), and his daughter, Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar (79).

The study, based on last month’s findings, said the Rembau MP had a market reach of 35.665%, while Instagram had a market share of 39.385%.

“Market reach is defined as the percentage of users in Malaysia who follow that Twitter user. Based on this list, Khairy is both the most-followed person and most-followed Malaysian in the country,” said Politweet founder Ahmad Kamal Nava.

The market share was reflective of their following on Twitter, Kamal told The Malaysian Insight.

National laureate and poet A. Samad Said (80), who joined DAP in 2015, is fifth on the list of most-followed politicians, followed by Bersatu Youth chief Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman (119) and Pakatan Harapan chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad (138).

PKR vice-president and Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli (139) is next, followed by Bersatu deputy president Mukhriz Mahathir (197) and Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein (235).

“Among the newer accounts, Dr Mahathir has moved up very quickly,” said Kamal.

“While the @chedetofficial account was started only in 2015, it already has 287,000 followers compared with older accounts such as @SyedSaddiq, which has 293,000. Syed Saddiq’s account was started in 2012.”

For the study, Kamal said, Politweet used a sample size of 24,677 Twitter users and expanded it to include their followers.

“This resulted in a list of 2.07 million users, that was then used to summarise the top 207,500 most-followed user accounts by users in Malaysia.”

Besides analysing which politicians were popular or most followed, Kamal said, the study could also be used for affinity marketing as it could recommend which users to follow based on targeting.

The most-followed accounts by Malaysian Twitter users are Instagram, Khairy, 9GAG, video blogger Mat Luthfi, singer Yuna, news channel Astro Awani, Najib, Kuala Lumpur prayer times schedule waktuSolatKL, inspirational sayings account Santapan Minda and popular preacher Ustaz Azhar Idrus. – November 10, 2017.