latest,
minute by minute updates. A producer doesn’t even
have to worry about promoting his movie online. His heroine
tweets about it, his director posts updates on his FB
page and the hero posts pictures of it. If the music director
is web savvy, he posts song samples and theme music.
This helps create the quintessential buzz and increases
the curiosity level of fans / readers thus generating
publicity for the movie in question. The producers also
know too well to massage the social networking sites gently
to produce desired results. There are song premiers, trailer
releases and exclusive footage on Youtube.
Essentially, all these make sure that the social networking
sites are overcrowded (true to their burgeoning population
much like the countries they are compared with). So
much so that it is immensely difficult to even ‘follow’
or ‘befriend’ all of the celebrities since
the choices are just too many. Starting from Amitabh
Bachchan and Amir Khan to Trisha and Shruti Hassan,
every single one of them (and everybody in between)
either blogs or on FB or tweets. So who do you follow?
All of them? If only.
The presence of celebrities freely in cyberspace also
has given rise to a new phenomenon - of using the celebrity
‘news updates’ as a news source. It’s
not uncommon to see the news-hungry media (both print
and web) making use of updates posted on FB, Twitter
and other social networking sites and blogs of celebrities.
It’s free news and free from copyright issues.
It also offers scoops, juicy in-set gossips apart from
other regular updates. Some newspapers also run a regular
feature on the ‘tweet of the day’ that highlights
the top tweets of different stars.
But this global phenomenon is yet to be experienced
entirely down south, as it seems. Barring a few celebrities,
not many have been attracted by the social networking
revolution. It’s only slowly catching up at the
moment what with Youtube trailer releases and dedicated
websites for movies. The tremendous potential of internet
(for the most part, it’s free) is yet to be realized
by our producers. Even Endhiran only made use of TV
commercials mostly, other than the trailer doing its
round on its own in the internet.
The presence of South Indian celebrities (read from
Kollywood) in cyberspace is negligible that it’s
almost easy to miss. Popular among them is Trisha, who
tweets a lot (her recent tweets provides enough updates
about Manmadhan Ambu). Among others, Shruti and Madhavan
are net savvy and have a presence in the cyberspace.
The others are shying away, probably to protect their
privacy from the internet’s unsafe terrain or
just owing to the lack of time. Be that as it may, let’s
believe they will be forced into the bottomless pit
called internet eventually and discover what it is to
be on the social networking sites.
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