Jan 4, 2010

Following SRK

On Saturday night, filmmaker Karan Johar tweeted to his 50,000-plus followers that the Badshah of Bollywood had joined the social networking site, Twitter. With minutes, there was a flurry online as thousands of fans searched for @iamsrk, as Shah Rukh Khan calls himself on Twitter.

SRK's first tweet, posted in the early hours of Sunday morning, said, "hi everyone. being extremely shy i never thought i would be here. but my friend @kjohar25 insisted that i should learn to share my life."

In a span of about ten hours, SRK had over 7,000 fans, with the numbers going up by a thousand every hour. At 11.15 am, the star had 6,064 fans and at the time of going to press he had surpassed the 8,500 mark. Overwhelemed by the response, SRK tweeted, "thanx everyone this is really sweet...didnt expect such a warm welcome. love to u all.'

His last tweet in the morning said, "kids and life calling...watching tim burton's 9 with them...last holiday...so up late...catch up later. sleep or be awake well.love to all."

While actors Priyanka Chopra and Farhan Akhtar welcomed SRK to Twitter and asked fans to follow him, SRK himself is following actor Riteish Deshmukh, businessman Anand Mahindra and Karan Johar, among others.

SRK's fans couldn't be more excited. "Finally King's on Twitter, follow the man," tweeted Aniket Veze. "oh my god....its The shahrukh khan on Twitter....i never ever thought you would be here..... aaaaaaahhhhh am so happy," wrote Tanusha Chawla.

In 2009, SRK started blogging on the official website of his Kolkata IPL team, but made very few entries. It remains to be seen how regular SRK will be on Twitter.