Jackpot Stars

How does one measure the popularity of a star on the Internet? One way is by measuring the amount of material on the star in any interactive medium on the Web. The IWC Film Diwane Club is a favourite Hindi film forum on the Internet, which many of the film fans are familiar with. At this site there is an extensive section of interaction where fans write their opinion on various stars. Strictly speaking, the volume of material written on each star is not a direct measure of the popularity of the star. However, one could say it is a strong indicator since one presumes that a fan would not waste time on opening the page and writing comments on a star who he/she does not really like (since we all know how precious on-line time is!).

What did I do?
What I did was simple: On 12 January, 1999, I just counted the number of pages (screens) of written material about each star by the site visitors at the IWC site (http://www.indiawebchakra.com/films). There are a lot of duplicate messages and some unflattering matter as well, but then a qualitative analysis would take too long. So just applying the law of averages, quantitatively the following results were found and tabulated.

Disclaimer:
Please note that this is solely a Web-based fun exercise and I do NOT claim it to be in any way an actual numerical index of the actual popularity of the star. I believe it to only be an indicator of the most popular stars among the Internet browsing public.

Results:
Date: 12 Jan 1999
In ascending order:
 

Actors  Amrish Puri  Anupam Kher  Nana Patekar  Rishi Kapoor  Sanjay Kapoor  Jackie Shroff  Govinda  Prabhu Deva  Rahul Roy  Sunil Shetty  Anil Kapoor  Amitabh Bachchan  Sunny Deol  Akshay Kumar  Bobby Deol  Ajay Devgan  Saif Ali Khan  Aamir Khan  Salman Khan  Shah Rukh Khan 3  3  5  5  6  9  10  10  11  16  18  19  19  22  23  28  31  37  47  139

Actresses   Shilpa Shetty  Tabu  Nagma  Pooja Bhatt  Mamta Kulkarni  Sridevi  Manisha Koirala  Raveena Tandon  Urmila Mataonkar  Mahima Choudhury  Sonali Bendre  Juhi Chawla  Karishma Kapoor  Madhuri Dixit  Kajol    4  10  10  12  21  25  27  28  30  32  35  36  56  85  90

 The single-digit page stars are understandably Amrish Puri, Anupam Kher since they are not really ‘heroes’ in the Hindi film sense. Again Rishi Kapoor with 5 is possible because he is no more actively doing hero roles. A surprising unit-digit star is Nana Patekar! Govinda has a rather surprisingly poor score of 10 as do Anil Kapoor with 18 and Amitabh Bachchan with 19. A significant absentee is Akshay Khanna who’s name is not yet in the star list though estimates would indicate his position somewhere in the teens. The middle order popularity heroes are Akshay Kumar, Devgan and Bobby with scores in the 20’s. The top of the heap are inevitably the Khans and the biggest surprise is Saif Ali Khan who comes a decent fourth with 31, so he really needn’t lose heart about his flops! Aamir comes third with 37 and Salman second with 47. But the phenomenal megastar is unmistakably Shah Rukh Khan who is way, way ahead with 139!!! He is the only star (male or female) to have a 3-digit score!

The heroines have a more predictable outcome with the only single digit being Shilpa Shetty. Tabu has an unexpectedly poor score of 10. The middle order have Sridevi (even now with 25), Manisha, Raveena, Urmila and surprisingly Mahima. Sonali has done unexpectedly well at 35. Juhi comes a rather poor fourth with 36. The top three are quite expected: Karishma with 56, Madhuri with 85 and beating her to the top is the vivacious Kajol with 90. Kajol stands second only to Shah Rukh in the popularity stakes!

Kajol And Shah Rukh Khan!