Rat-race is a very common term in Bollywood dictionary. Whether they admit it or not, every big celebrity indulges in the game and wants to top it too. But we are talking about a different race today – the hare and the tortoise race, a story that you might have heard in your kindergarten days. The same story seems to have come out true in present times in Bollywood with ‘Shah Rukh Khan’ being analogous to the ‘hare’ and ‘Salman Khan’ being analogous to the ‘tortoise’. We explain how...
A couple of days back Salman Khan logged on to the social networking website Twitter and cyberspace went into frenzy. All his fans who had been waiting since ages to connect with the superstar on the social networking website were elated and in minutes he had, not hundreds but, thousands of fans following him on his account.
An interesting fact to be noted is rival superstar Shah Rukh Khan completed 100 days on Twitter on the same day when Salman Khan joined the network. So while SRK may be celebrating his century with the immense popularity he enjoys on the website, Sallu isn’t far behind in giving tough competition to Shah Rukh and catching up with him in the race.
Today, Shah Rukh Khan has more than 2.7 lakh followers on Twitter which is humungous. But within just three day’s of presence, Salman Khan has gained as many as 30 thousand followers and by the time you read this, the number could even double. So the rate at which Salman Khan is winning followers, seems like it won’t be long before he matches up to Shah Rukh. So despite starting late, the tortoise (Salman) is almost on the verge of catching up with the hare (Shah Rukh) and if consistent enough, might even overtake it.
But does popularity on a social networking site, in any way, also affects the star-status or brand value of a celebrity to some extent or are these figures simply frivolous? “Definitely it affects the brand value of a celeb”, says prominent trade analyst Taran Adarsh. “The social networking websites have given a platform, both to the celebrity and the fans to interact on a one-on-one basis. Gone are the days when stars used to hide behind sunglasses or black windows. Today everyone is getting real and attempting to connect more openly. Social networking websites esp. Twitter are helping celebrities increase their fan following in a huge way and the more fans and followers you have, the more you add to your brand value.”
Clearly the Shah Rukh – Salman war has transcended to a new arena and though they aren’t making any conscious attempts to intrude each other’s territory, in coming days one can expect a cold war between the two in cyberspace. Fans who were following SRK’s tweets have a new option to follow Salman Khan now, a domain which was dormant till some time ago.
Of course, like a film, the fan-following on Twitter too will clearly depend on the appeal of their tweets. Like S. Pankaj, a hardcore social networking enthusiast says, “Salman Khan has just joined Twitter. But his tweets are interesting and not monotonous like SRK. SRK says a lot of things in a single tweet which is not appealing. I just hope Salman doesn't use twitter to promote his films.”
Jigar Shah, a computer professional who keeps a track of both SRK and Salman’s tweets says, “Salman is still new. He is decent till now. SRK is too much speech thingy. But Salman has his own brand of comedy in his tweets”. Then there are loyal Salman Khan fans like Assad Khan, a hardware engineer who says, “I will always follow Salman Khan because I am his hardcore fan and he supports causes like Being Human”.
Extending the debate on whether popularity on Twitter helps the celebrities’ add to the box-office prospects of their films, Pankaj gives a logical answer saying, “It is the other way around. The more good work you do in films, the more popular you are on Twitter.”
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