Superstar Rajinikanth storms social media
The overwhelming response to superstar Rajinikanth's appearance on Twitter has been wholly in keeping with his larger than life persona. Within hours of his joining the popular micro-blogging site on Monday, his verified handle @superstarajini registered more than a 1,00,000 followers; the number has been rising by the hundreds every minute since then. His first tweet, sent around 4pm on Monday, has already been re-tweeted about 10,000 times and cyberspace is awash with trademark jokes about how it is not Rajinikanth that has come to Twitter but the social media site that has followed the superstar. According to the actor's Press release, he picked Twitter for his maiden venture into social media because not only is it “abuzz with all the news and the trends that happen across the globe” but it is also “where all the best Rajini one-liners are!” Irrespective of whether that is indeed the case, Twitter India has undoubtedly given a huge welcome to the superstar. Interestingly, Rajinikanth is the first Tamil film star to join Twitter, but he will have company from fraternity members of the Hindi film industry. Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, for instance, has been on Twitter since May 2010, while others like Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Amir Khan and Priyanka Chopra have also joined the conversation on social media. Outside of the film industry too there are several Indian celebrities on Twitter, such as cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, musician AR Rahman and author Chetan Bhagat. Each has several thousands of followers but, unsurprisingly, it is Big B, the superstar who captivated generations of cinema lovers in India and abroad, who leads with 8.6 million followers. In fact, Big B is the only Indian celebrity on the global top 100 list — the first three positions here are occupied by American popstars Katy Perry and Justin Bieber, followed by US President Barack Obama. It will be interesting to see if Rajinikanth makes it to the list as well — and how quickly.
For now Rajinikanth's Twitter account is geared towards promoting his next film Kochadaiiyaan which releases this Friday. In fact, every user who follows his account in this first week is receiving an automated reply from the superstar with a poster of the film. This has annoyed some fans who do did not appreciate being spammed with promotional material. This is something that the folks at Fluence, the PR agency handling the star's online media interests, should have been careful about. Having successfully managed the digital presence of other top Bollwood stars including Big B and King Khan, they have solid experience in this field. Surely, they know that if Rajinikanth's Twitter venture is to be a success in the long term, he has to personalise it better. Rajinikanth's fans want to hear from him, not from an intern at his PR agency. This might be bit of a challenge for the superstar who is known to be rather media shy.