By Hindustan Times

Mumbai, April 16 -- The Twitter bug has finally bitten Salman Khan, long after it did arch rival Shah Rukh Khan. His first tweet was posted on his handle BeingSalmanKhan at 12.22 pm on April, 13. "Arbaaz ne kaha ke tweet kar toh banta hai boss, (Arbaaz told me to tweet, I said ok)" it reads.

So Arbaaz Khan finally convinced his big brother to join him on the fastest growing social network online. Says Azbaaz who himself is a newcomer to the microblogging service, "I have joined Twitter on the March 17. I found it very interesting and was keen on Salman joining it. I told him how he could communicate with his fans, send them messages, clarify news stories through his tweets." He adds, "Salman is not net savvy, in fact, I had set up the account for him. Right now, he's very excited, maybe because he's new to it and tweets regularly. I don't know about the future though," Salman had 28,718 followers at the time of going to print while rival Shah Rukh had 2,71,655.

Virtual face-off

He created his home page, imsrk on January 3, 2010, at 2:38 am, just before the release of My Name is Khan and at the insistence of Karan Johar. He quickly picked up 10, 000 followers within 24 hours of joining. This puts Salman far ahead in the popularity race, at least among Twitter users. Does this mean we could be in for a virtual war betweens the Khans? So why are Bollywood actors joining twitter in a big way? Is it just for the free publicity, the desire to be in the loop or just to prove their mettle by gaining maximum followers? At the recent NDTV Indian of the Year Awards, Twitter was a hot topic with SRK and Shashi Tharoor discussing their Twitter follower count on stage. "A Bollywood actor would tweet only to keep in touch with fans, nothing else," says Gul Panag categorically. She has about 61,000 followers and had tweeted as the face of the Wills Lifestyle Fashion Week in 2009. Like SRK, Farhan Akhtar too started tweeting on January 3, just before Karthik Calling Karthik released.

Shahid Kapur has used the platform to promote his upcoming movie, Badmaash Company. He has about 1,38, 134 people following him. Vivek Oberoi is a regular nowadays and more so because of his movie, Prince, which opened at cinemas recently. He has 40, 616 followers as of now. Priyanka Chopra is one of the most active celebrities on Twitter. She was recently invited to the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco and met Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone. She also tweeted about the event saying "My day was really interesting because I was invited to Twitter headquarters in San Francisco! Had a great time. Thanks Biz and team for the wonderful hospitality." Priyanka has moved forward by leaps and bounds in the Twitter arena, leaving other celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Shahid Kapoor and others behind. A big reason for that has been her regularity on Twitter and her willingness to interact with her fans. She has 2,74,131 followers, more than any Bollywood celeb. Akshay Kumar who has 48, 600 followers writes regularly, mostly on his films, shoots and even posts links to his interviews. Mallika Sherawat who has 55, 046 followers says on her bio that she's currently in Hollywood for the editing of her movie, Hisss, co-starring Irrfan Khan.

'Riteishd' as he's called or Riteish Deshmukh also tweets regularly. The last post talks about the Housefull promotion on Wednesday. He has 81, 573 followers. With 1,36,902 followers and counting, Abhishek Bachchan talks a lot about Raavan. With 1,57,412 followers. Karan Johar is one of the most ardent twitter addicts. He has gone on record to say that he wants all Bollywood celebs on Twitter. Right now, Salman is ruling Twitter. Incidentally, SRK completed 100 days on the day Salman joined the site. Though there are big names following him currently, he has chosen to follow only brother Arbaaz and Sonakshi Sinha, who is working with him on his home production, Dabangg. Some of the people who have welcomed Salman on the site include Riteish. "Hey a big shout out to the best looking man. Give him all the love tweeps," he wrote. Sonam Kapoor's tweet reads, "Welcome... had the privilege of working with him on my first film."