Digital celebrity network Fluence has brought Tamil superstar Rajinikanth to Twitter and Facebook. Fluence already helps various celebrities such as Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan and Karishma Kapoor manage their online presence across various social media networks.
Ashish Joshi, who is the VP Digital & Business Head at Fluence told Medianama that the group does not plan to monetize the content immediately. “In this case we’ll go step by step and concentrate on reaching out to fans. If any interesting project comes up that can help Rajini sir to build an IP, we’ll definitely work on that, like a mobile game,” Joshi said. He added that the company is not involved in the Kochadaiyaan game, but will look into securing IP rights for the star in the future.
Update: Joshi has clarified that Facebook page has not been created yet and will be set up in a few days.
Fluence will have all rights to the “digital life of the artist” (as Joshi puts it). “We’ll have access to his social media presence, voice, video etc online,” Joshi said.
He also added that the company has been in talks with “Rajini sir” for a while. “He has stayed away from social media all this while so he wanted to do it in a way that was genuine. The timing is also right because it’s closer to the launch of his movie Kochadaiyaan. To begin with, he will only be on Twitter and Facebook and if he is comfortable, we can help him create a presence on other platforms such as Tumblr,” Joshi says.
The company does not handle the social media campaigns for Kochadaiyaan, but Joshi said that Fluence will work closely with the company handling that. “We’ll try to build properties around Rajinikanth for his fans; something that the fans would be privileged to view and share,” Joshi adds.
Salutation to the Lord. Vaṇakkam aṉaivarukkum !! A big thank you to all my fans. Excited on this digital journey http://t.co/79ea6MrDe3
— Rajinikanth (@superstarrajini) May 5, 2014
Rajinikanth has managed to garner over 50k followers within hours of joining the network and over half of them (including your’s truly) followed him before he posted his first tweet. His first tweet (above) has received over 4k retweets already!
ZipDial tie-up: Fans can also follow the actor’s Twitter account by simply dialling, or giving a missed call at 080 6700 6666 to access their idol’s Tweets, which is possible due to a global integration between Twitter India and ZipDial.
PS: Twitter verified his account within half an hour of its creation from the look of it.
has anyone done the @twitter doesn’t verify @superstarrajini, he verifies twitter joke yet?
— Sathya (@SathyaBhat) May 5, 2014
