A Bollywood Battle, Waged

The microblogging service popular in India and the rest of the world, is emerging as a place where Bollywood stars can hold a neverending popularity contest.

Indian media this week has been following the follower counts of Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, two actors known for being rivals. Shah Rukh Khan, star of the recent film “My Name Is Khan,” joined Twitter at the beginning of the year and has given the service a workout since then, posting updates about shoots, mourning a loss by his Kolkata Knight Riders cricket team, sharing a shaving photo and tweeting good night to fans nearly every evening. He even admitted, via Twitter, to voting for himself in the latest Time 100 Poll (”cant think of a more cheesy thing i have done lately,” he wrote).

Salman Khan, a Bollywood bad boy who’s crossed the law for his driving and even poaching, joined Twitter on Tuesday. He quickly mastered the art of condensing his thoughts into 140 characters (example: “Twitter is good, y? Bcoz u guys r amazing. Out of 25k followers, just 2 ppl hv a prob with my being. Mustv hrt thm smwhr”) and already has more than 35,000 followers. While he has much ground to cover — Shah Rukh Khan has more than 270,000 followers — his instant popularity drew attention.

AFP/Getty Images

Aamir Khan, left, and Salman Khan at the December premiere of ‘3 Idiots’ in Mumbai.

India Times weighed in Thursday, saying “the tortoise [Salman] is almost on the verge of catching up with the hare [Shah Rukh]…in coming days one can expect a cold war between the two in cyberspace.” It quoted a trade analyst, Taran Adarsh, who said Twitter can affect celebrities’ “brand value,” as well as fans who are already comparing the difference between the Khans’ tweets (”[Salman's] tweets are interesting and not monotonous like SRK,” S. Pankaj told the Times).

A third Khan celeb, Aamir Khan, has yet to join the race (or has he?), but the speculation has already started.

All three of them, however, have their work cut out for them if they want to overtake Hollywood’s biggest Twitterers. Ashton Kutcher, the most followed user, according to Twitterholic, has more than 4.7 million followers, while other celebs, such as Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake, have more than two million each.