Dalai Lama Has 4.5 Million Facebook Likes

If Pope Benedict XVI has more than 500,000 followers on Twitter and Dalai Lama has over 5 million followers, the likes of the religions they lead on Facebook are also growing.

The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism has a Facebook account classified as Public Figure and more than 4.6 million users liked it, more than 200,000 talking about it, and his page has timeline details with activities and photos posted including access for users to comment on his page.

The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, although he lives outside Tibet. His life is a guided by three major commitments: the promotion of basic human values, the fostering of inter-religious harmony and the welfare of the Tibetan people.

On the other hand, Tibetan Buddhism has more than 18,000 likes and more than 300 people talked about it on Facebook. The page includes related pages of Mahayana and Hinayana links.

Christianity has more than 300,000 likes from users within the Facebook universe and more than 4,000 users are talking about it.

Pope Benedict XVI has a Public Figure page in Facebook with more than 70,000 likes and more than 2,000 users are talking about it. The pontiff is the 265th pope, a position in which he serves dual roles as Sovereign of the Vatican City State and leader of the Catholic Church. His page also includes some background details about the Pope as a teacher, professor, author and pianist.

More than 13,000 users liked the Vatican City Facebook page and more than 2,000 FB users are talking about it, while over 68,000 users have checked in using or linking Facebook. The city's Italian name is Stato della Città del Vaticano.

Another major and controversial global religion, Islam, on the other hand, has more than 1.5 million likes on Facebook and more than 23,000 FB users talk about it. Its Facebook page describes Islam as "a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion articulated by the Qur'an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God and by teachings and normative example (called the Sunnah and composed of Hadith) of Muhammed, considered by them to be the last prophet of God."

Prophet Muhammad is under the Public Figure with more than 200,000 likes and more than 6,000 people are talking about the prophet, who has been the subject of cartoons that led to calls for jihad or holy war.

In Indian subcontinent, Hinduism page in Facebook is under the Religion section. It has more than 83,000 likes, and more than 800 people are talking about it. The page contains details about its numerous traditions and certain related pages as well.

Another Indian religion which began from Buddha, Buddhism has its own page in Facebook with more than 130,000 like and more than 110,000 users are talking about it. Buddha has two Public Figure pages with likes ranging from at least 160,000 to more than 282,000 and those talking about him range from least 3,000 to more than 5,400. Buddha has his own Facebook app called Wisdom of the Buddha with at least 120,000 monthly users being enlightened.

On the opposite end, a Chinese folk religion, Shenism, is classified as an Interest page with more than 200 likes and at least 16 people had talked about it.

The growing number of Facebook likes and Twitter followers of major religious groups is an indicator that technology and faith can mix and social networking sites are modern tools to propagate the faith, possibly replacing the old model of sending missionaries to foreign lands to gain more adherents, now appropriately called followers, likers and friends.