The celebrity social network!
 

Days are gone when the paparazzi stalked celebrities on their whereabouts and hideouts to feed the ever news-hungry media and the celebrity-starved public. Welcome to the digital era, where celebrities do it all themselves. They blog, tweet and write columns in popular websites and magazines. Even better, they post instant updates on their day-to-day activities on Twitter, the recent fad among the net savvy celebrities. Now, how cool is that?

The entire world (read India) dropped its jaw in surprise when the whole of Bollywood took to blogging - mostly after Aamir Khan felt he was bitten by the writing bug and felt the need to let the world know that he has a dog named after the King Khan. A slew of other celebrities followed suit from Amitabh to Salman.

What followed is a bombardment of news source for magazines and an excessive coverage of celebrity opinion about public and political matters. Following the racist attack of Indian students in Australia, Amitabh asked his

followers whether he should accept the honorary doctorate conferred upon him by the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. That he refused the honor is history. His blog enabled him to voice an opinion almost instantly rather than waiting for a media-house mouthpiece to do that on his behalf.

Since most of these celebrity blogs are not copyrighted, updates appearing on them are splattered all over the media as soon as they appear. Evidently a painless way to source news.

But of late, even blogs seem to be losing sheen as microblogging is taking over slowly. As against expressing views and opinions as page-long articles in blogs, microblogging lets the user post the same in the form of one to two liner updates. Much easier and less time consuming without any complex hassles of writing, posting and publishing; microblogging works instantly. And what’s more, that’s what the whole world is talking about now – Twitter.

If you read Mallika gushing about Usher and how handsome he is in the newspapers and internet magazines, be enlightened that the news is taken straight out of her Twitter page. Being the net savvy bombshell she is, Mallika gives the entire world a glimpse into her daily life in the form of Tweets. She also recently confessed of a letter of recommendation written by Jackie Chan for her US work visa, on her Twitter page.

Hollywood, in its entirety, is reeling under the Twitter fever with film celebrities and even politicians having a profile of their own. President Obama used Twitter as a part of his election campaign during the presidential elections. And Ashton Kutcher uses it to tell the world that he’s scared of his wife Demi Moore’s voodoo doll collection. Perspectives.

Bollywood celebrities other than Mallika who are spotted at the Twitter space include Gul Panag, Preity Zinta, Shahid Kapoor and Purab Kohli. The Zinta girl has more than 2000 followers while Gul is a regular in providing everyday updates starting from her day at work to her i-phone’s technical glitches.

Of our very own tinsel townies, Madras Maestro AR Rahman is on Twitter although he doesn’t seem to be very active, his last tweet being on May 29.

But the other celebrities down south seem to prefer to keep a rather low profile. Apart from the few Face Book and Orkut profiles, of few celebrities that are blocked for outsiders other than friends, including Arya, Dhanush, Trisha, Padmapriya, Ileana and Gazaala nobody has showed any interest whatsoever in either blogging or tweeting away in cyberspace. Well, for now, let’s think ‘may be they will soon catch up with the rest of the world’.

Respond to

Behindwoods is not responsible for the views of columnists.


   
 
CANDID VIEWS
Why ’daddy’ gets it wrong!
Is Tamil cinema devaluing its classics?
The ‘real’ problem with cinema
The other Madras of Tamil cinema
 
TALKING PICTURES
The celebrity social network!
Cannes 2009 – of designer gowns and serious movies!
The war against Multiplexes!
The fire called Nandita!
The Indian Oscars!
 
Fourth Dimension
What if Nayan marries Prabhu Deva?
The director without a signature!
Shankar’s affinity to Robin Hood
Vikram - We miss you!
 
DEEP FOCUS
The New Kollywood
If Aamir had played fair, would Asin have cried foul?
Slumdog Millionaire – Unentertaining, Laughable and Annoying!
Kumaravelu and Prakash Raj glowing - Trisha?
 
 
 
 
 
Click for Behindwoods News Click For Galleries