SINGAPORE - Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's Facebook page hit a milestone early Saturday morning, with a post on a controversial dress helping it cross the half a million mark.
As of 1.45pm on Saturday, the page had about 500,400 likes.
Mr Lee has posted a mix of serious messages and light-hearted posts since the page was started in April 2012. His latest, about the science behind the heated debate on the colour of a dress, has been liked more than 15,000 times and shared more than 4,500 times since it was posted on Friday.
He has used the page to interact with the public. Mr Lee held a 45-minute question-and-answer session on Jan 24, sharing information about his personal life and tackling questions on policy issues. More than 1,600 questions were put up.
In an interview with local media earlier that month, Mr Lee spoke about how social media has changed the way he engages with Singaporeans. He said: "It makes me a lot more conscious in pitching what I want to say, to ask myself how will I distil this down in a form which someone can digest on Facebook or Instagram?"
His Instagram account has about 58,000 followers.
Mr Lee added that while it was necessary to have serious response and content, "you cannot always be putting out long learned dissertations on some cosmic issue or another."
"There are times when you have to be light hearted, when you see a beautiful sunset you share it with people and hope they will enjoy it with you," he said. "When you catch an owl somewhere in Istana, maybe somebody else is interested in the owl. It is something unusual and personal," Mr Lee said.
Some of his most popular posts include a picture taken in Singapore General Hospital after a prostate biopsy, a post on visiting his father, former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, in hospital, and a Mother's Day greeting in 2014.
Here are some of Mr Lee's most liked Facebook posts:
