Instant Fame in Just 140 Characters

Instant Fame in Just 140 Characters is a Hindustan Times feature by Nikhil Hemrajani published on 18 March 2011. The article profiles influential Indian Twitter users operating beyond the celebrity sphere, highlighting how individuals from diverse fields—ranging from political activism to policy research—were using the platform’s 140-character format to build communities, disseminate information and conduct innovative forms of public engagement.

Article Details
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Article Details

📰 Published in:: Hindustan Times
📅 Date:: 18 March 2011
👤 Authors:: Nikhil Hemrajani
📄 Type:: Feature Article
📰 Newspaper Link:: Read Online

Full Text

If you were to look for Indian users on Twitter by their number of followers or tweet-counts, your list would stop short of Bollywood superstars. But if you look deeper, there's a lot going on under the surface.

Take Polgrim, for instance. This user who keeps his identity undisclosed, has a relatively small following of 2,700-odd people. But the Twitter elite, collectively called the twitterati, swear by his updates. With a master's degree from England in Peace Studies, Polgrim who has lived in countries like Scotland, Switzerland and Jordan, curates news from journalists across the world, with a special focus on the Middle East.

"I started using Twitter when I was living in Aman, Jordan. I did a documentation of the taxi drivers there — I would talk to them and then tweet about it. I became a conduit between the Middle East and India so people started following me," he says. Today, Polgrim is understood as a political activist who tweets about anti-colonialism, Israel-Palestine conflict and more. Chandni Parekh is a 28-year-old social psychologist. She consults with NGOs and runs workshops on sexuality education and sexual abuse, using the Twitter handle fundacause. "FAC is an initiative that spreads the word about people seeking and offering money for education, medical treatments and events," she says. "Twitter has helped me reach out to those who tweet about social issues by giving them relevant resources and information to act upon."

Writer and stand-up comedian Rohan Joshi, at the other end of the spectrum, is loved for his humour. His alias mojorojo has over 20,000 tweets and 7,000 followers. "Since I write a lot of comedy, Twitter's a great place to get work and I've gotten gigs solely because of Twitter. It's like having a CV in 140 characters," Joshi says.

Sunil Abraham (sunil_abraham), executive director of Centre for Internet and Society is a research think tank. "I use Twitter to do research on Web 2.0. The old fashioned way of doing research involved geniuses locking themselves in ivory towers and publishing their work after a couple of years. We live stream and micro-blog at events to keep our readers informed," he says. Finally, columnist and literary critic Nilanjana Roy is nothing short of popular with over 22,000 followers. She ran the popular blog, Kitabkhana, for many years under an alias. "I link stories and essays that are of interest to me — about books, reading, food and travel, with occasional links to women's issues and human rights commentary," she says. "I don't know why people follow me, but if they share in my sense of happiness at some of the great writing that's available online, I'm happy for them," she adds.

Context and Background

This feature appeared during Twitter’s early adoption phase in India, when the platform was still novel enough to merit profiles of prominent users beyond film celebrities. Although Twitter launched globally in 2006 and began attracting Indian users around 2008–2009, its Indian user base in 2011 remained relatively small. The platform’s 140-character constraint, inherited from SMS conventions, shaped a communication style that emphasised brevity, wit, and rapid exchange.

By focusing on users outside Bollywood, the article highlighted emerging forms of digital public engagement. The profiles illustrated varied uses of Twitter: Polgrim used the platform to curate international journalism and commentary on Middle Eastern affairs, positioning himself as a bridge between global reporting and Indian audiences. His approach demonstrated how Twitter enabled niche information networks to develop across geographic boundaries.

Chandni Parekh’s use of Twitter through the ‘fundacause’ initiative showed how the platform could support small-scale social mobilisation, helping individuals seek or offer financial assistance for education, medical needs, and events. Similarly, Sunil Abraham’s account of using Twitter for research reflected a shift toward real-time knowledge sharing, with live updates from events supplementing more traditional publication models.

The article also captured Twitter’s growing relevance for creative and intellectual work. Rohan Joshi described it as a compact professional portfolio, while Nilanjana Roy’s wide following illustrated how curated links and commentary could sustain public engagement without long-form publishing. Together, these profiles documented a moment when Twitter was emerging as a space for substantive conversation in India, before later structural and cultural changes reshaped the platform’s character.