Twitter always strives to be the platform of choice where people can be able to follow a certain event that is happening somewhere in the world. In the same spirit, Twitter has announced four new hashtags that will enable its 316 million plus users to follow the events around the historic papal visit to the US.
Pope Francis officially joined Twitter in 2013 and the tweet signaling his debut in the twittersphere generated a lot of interest, so much Twitter said that the announcement generated over 7 million tweets about the papacy at a rate of 130,000 tweets per minute.
Dear friends, I thank you from my heart and I ask you to continue to pray for me.
Pope Francis.— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) March 17, 2013
In the light of the impending visit to the US, the pope visit has these following hashflags:
# PopeInUS
#PopeInDC
#PopeinNYC
#PopeInPhilly
The hashflags denote where the Pope will visit and the emojis at the end denote the most famous landmarks of the specific places. According to the itinerary posted by the White House, The Pope is expected to land in DC today at 4pm EDT which is 11pm local time and is expected to stay in the US until Sunday.
Twitter has already tracked the conversation around this visit and according to the data they have been able to pull since September 15th, over 58,000 tweets.
As of now, the pope is bidding farewell to Cuba where he has been since Saturday, interest is surely building and it can be seen from the tweets posted:
The #Pope will arrive later today in the U.S.! #PopeinUS pic.twitter.com/hQroVNUn9W
— National Catholic Register (@NCRegister) September 22, 2015
#PopeInUS is going to be the largest security operation in American history to protect one person.
— Raymond Arroyo (@RaymondArroyo) September 22, 2015
Welcome, Holy Father! #PopeinUS pic.twitter.com/9j7FsGlIND
— Matt Swaim (@mattswaim) September 22, 2015
#PopeFrancis arrives in the U.S. today, bringing some tough love to America #PopeinUS http://t.co/q4c2BKi3B5 pic.twitter.com/r7GmAEcuMF
— CNN (@CNN) September 22, 2015
https://twitter.com/ajam/status/646351345000312833
Twitter Faith, the official Twitter account that is focused on religious related tweet has come up with a list that has accounts that will give in depth coverage of the visit in the form of photos, videos and Periscope broadcasts. As usual after the Papal visit, Twitter may later on release statistics of the number of tweets generated from the 6 day event.
Twitter has been winning when it comes to covering live events and it is stamping its authority in covering the niche of in-the-moment events that are happening around the world.
