A Star War Now On Facebook

There is a major star war on Facebook with Mammootty & "MOHANLAL" going neck and neck with regard to virtual friends.Though, it has been a couple of years since these two entered the web world, it was only in the last month that their fan base saw a two-fold increase.
Though the social networking site has been used by film stars in other languages to promote their films for quite some time,the Malayalam superstars and their fans realized the strength of this media only recently.It was only after the number of Mammootty’s friends touched the one lakh mark that Mohanlal’s fans woke up.The next few days saw about 75,000 friends being added to Lal’s list, an increase by 100%.
Now actormohanlal, the FB account run by Mohanlal fans, has around 1,54,000 friends, while mr.mammootty.com,the account owned by Mammootty, has around 1,40,000 friends.
“On Facebook, there are some seven or eight groups in the name of Mohanlal. These had been created by his fans, and not Lalettan. Netizen’s support to Lalettan had thus remained scattered. So, we decided to promote one of the accounts. That’s how the number jumped in a short span,” said S Sajeevan, general secretary,Worldwide Online Mohanlal Fans Association.“It was only six months since Mammukka became active on FB.Since then his posts have been getting wide response. However,other stars who claim wide fan base on FB, get poor response to their posts,’’ said Abdul Manaf, CEO,Easy Software, the designers of Mammootty’s website.
“We do not use any tactics to increase the fan base. It’s Mammukka’s own account and he uses it to interact with netizens on a wide range of socially relevant issues. Moreover, the increase in the number of his friends happened not overnight, but at a steady pace,” Manaf added.
Some Malayalam stars have reportedly been employing social media strategy companies to increase their fan base overnight. Such companies make use of hacked FB accounts to add more friends to their clients,” an IT expert said.
These stars have also begun to focus more on promoting their films through FB. They have realized that most films disappear from cinemas after a week or so, and that the initial collection hence plays a crucial role in the producer getting his money back.


Courtesy : Times Of India Newspaper 9th February,2012