The Biggest Online Fanclub of Shahrukh Khan
Shahrukh Khan, actor of Hindi Movies is popularly known as king of Indian Film Industry, Bollywood. From last 20 years Shahrukh Khan is ruling the hearts of millions of Indians worldwide but those millions of Shahrukh Khan’s (SRK) fans were never able to come together on one single platform till the introduction of social networking in India. When Orkut.com first came online in 2004, when internet in India was just limited to MIRC and Yahoo chat, it gave a very good opportunity to many young Indian internet freaks to meet, connect and share their interests and views through this revolutionary online tool. At that time some of Shahrukh Khan’s die hard fans created an online community on Orkut.com and today that community has became the most active and strongest fan group in entire web world. With more than 400,000 members SRK Fans on orkut is beating every other SRK fan groups and websites.
The Shahrukh Khan/SRK Fan Club on orkut was created on March 2004 by an orkut user named, Prashant. It is a dedicated community hangout for their idol, hero and star SRK. Since then every forum discussions and topics on this virtual fan group is revolving around the only subject,” SRK, his life, his upcoming movies and every possible topic related to him. Ayush Vyas, one of the community moderators and a devotee of Shahrukh Khan is excited for the latest upcoming movie “My Name is Khan”. The community members are promoting this movie in their own creative way. “We have planned a promotional strategy for SRK’s next movie “My Name Is Khan” in which all members/SRK fans from all over the country will watch My Name Is Khan first day first show, wearing same t-shirts”, Ayush said joyfully.
A special discussion thread related to My Name is Khan’s promo has already got more than 300 replies and it’s still one of the most trending topics in the community beside many other hot topics like ‘Community Display Picture rating thread’, ‘the last person is biggest SRK fan’ and ‘best nick name of Shahrukh Khan’ etc. Though the community has only 50 discussion threads but one can estimate the rate of activities by looking at the number of replies which goes to approximately more than 50,000.
At present, there is only one “hot” subject to talk on The Shahrukh Khan/SRK Fan community, i.e. the release of My Name is Khan, a thread named “MNIK Volunteers” where members of the community can register themselves and contribute in promoting MNIK (My Name is Khan), when asked what is the objective of MNIK Volunteers? One dedicated member known as Raj has replied via orkut scrap that “the basic reason why its created happens because SRK is not promoting the movie in India but overseas, so we thought of creating a team which will have interested volunteers from all possible states in India, then discuss some promotional campaigns among respective locality thus bring some awareness in people to watch My Name is Khan and bring a grand success to such a historical movie.” a small way of promoting MNIK is already started by some members by adding “My Name is…” before their names. Community members are also trying to name the community as “Official Fan Group” by associating their online community with Shahrukh Khan’s production house, Red Chillies Entertainment. “The biggest surprise for all of us will be our association with RCE, we will promote SRK’s movies officially on orkut” said Ayush.
Not only orkut, but the community members are also using social media tools like twitter and facebook to spread their activities and to widen their reach to more and more SRK’s craziest fans together. Orkut community of Shahrukh Khan’s fans is already partnered with one of the biggest SRK’s discussion forum website, PlanetSRK.com.
Without social networking and social media tools it was impossible to know how crazy these people are for Shahrukh Khan. Though celebrity fans is a long history in itself but new age media and the way to get connect with each other is now faster and easier than before.
