With 8.87 million followers on Twitter so far, Pope Francis may be looking to join another social media platform sooner rather than later.
Citing a Vatican Radio interview with spokesman Dario Viganò, the Italian news wire ANSA reports that the Pope will launch his own Instagram account as early as next week, on March 19, using the handle "Franciscus."
The Vatican has its own verified Instagram account with close to 80,000 followers. But with his Twitter success, Pope Francis is likely to draw a much larger audience.
It also won't come as too much of a surprise if the pontiff does join the Facebook-owned, image-based social media platform, as he met with Instagram founder Kevin Systrom earlier this year at the Vatican.
At the time, Systrom posted an image of the two on Instagram, with his caption reading: "We spoke about the power of images to unite people across different cultures and languages."
If nothing else, his caption gives us a hint at the types of images and videos Pope Francis may be looking to post on his Instagram account - and, no, it doesn't sound like it'll be selfies.
After all, images or videos will likely be posted on his behalf, and will likely be similar to the few he's posted on Twitter, which includes an image of two refugee children and a video message to Iraqi Christians.
Image credit: Edgar Jiménez/CC BY-SA 2.0
Via Engadget
