Orkut Shanti Om

If you had any doubts about the Badshah of Bollywood's popularity, we suggest you drop by the social networking platform Orkut for a dekho.

Fans of Shah Rukh Khan have put up several sites dedicated to his upcoming film, Om Shanti Om, terming it one of the most eagerly anticipated films of the year.

Farah Khan, who is currently shooting a song for OSO in Film City, says, "These Orkut pages dedicated to Shah Rukh and OSO have registered over 1,000 hits from fans across the world.

I was very pleased when one of my assistant directors discovered them and told us about it. It has been put together by an OSO fan club on Orkut."

Good publicity

One such site, titled OSO —SRK Next Film, has registered 1,267 hits since February 2007 while another one titled OSO has registered 1,084 members since March 15 this year.

Says Farah, "Fans talk about how a lot of people are awaiting Om Shanti Om and that it's the most discussed film of the year."

Since she is not very computer savvy, Farah says with a wry laugh, "I don't own a computer and am still into handwriting my scripts. It was one of my assistant directors, Pooja Desai (Manmohan Desai's granddaughter and Ketan Desai's daughter), who pointed it out to me.

It's OSO's first fan club, and discusses the movie and chats about it. Though I am sure there are lots of other unofficial websites dedicated to the film, this is the first one I have come across and I am very kicked about it."

Orkut zindabad

Farah adds that though she is not internet savvy, she has heard about Orkut before. "It was one of the questions asked to me on Kaun Banega Crorepati 3 about what was Time magazine's invention: Utube, Nano or Orkut?

Fortunately, Karan and I knew the answer." Farah has one last word to add on behalf of Orkut, "I have heard that the government wants to ban Orkut, but can they please hold on to that decision till OSO releases?"

OSO stars Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Rampal, Shreyas Talpade and Kirron Kher, among other actors.