The citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are some of the most active social media users in the world. Roughly 20% of the country is on Twitter and 25% is on Facebook, according to Statista.
Upon King Abdullah’s passing, then Crown Prince Salman became Saudi Arabia’s first King to use social media publicly – and he even changed his handle on Twitter to @KingSalman.
According to Arab News, King Salman wrote after King Abdullah’s death: “God rest the soul of King Abdullah…” The king later tweeted: “I am asking God to help me serve the dear people and realize their dreams, and protect our country, ensure security and stability, and protect us from all evils.”
Since then, King Salman has racked up more than 450,000 new followers on the microblogging site, bringing his total to over 1.75 million.
According to the Economist, “there are so many Twitter users among the 60% of Saudis who use the internet that the country has the world’s highest penetration of the microblog; the number of users rose by 45% between 2012 and 2013. About 8m of the country’s 31m people use Facebook.”
