![Salman Khan](https://wp.missmalini.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/salmansm.jpg)
For all his achievements, this is one bit of Salman Khan news I really didn’t expect. So last night I had one eye on the Filmfare Twitter account to see who won awards at that ceremony, and another eye on my TV, where the Zee Cine Awards was being telecast. Amongst Abhishek Bachchan and Riteish Deshmukh‘s gags, fake shots of laughing celebrities inserted in at random moments, and the editors going wild at the thought of Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone seated together, the thing that stood out was Zee Cine giving out an award for Best Use in Social Media. And that too to Salman Khan!
To me, it seemed like Zee’s sole intention that night was to allow everyone to walk away happy, because not only did they have lots of random awards, they also gave out joint awards in quite a few categories (best debut, for example). Which probably explains the Best Use of Social Media award, because really, what does that have to do with cinema? What bugs me more is that they’ve decided the winner of this award based purely on online popularity, which I think has nothing really to do with actual use of social media. I like Sallu as much as the next person – but the guy tweets only occasionally, and his Facebook updates consist mostly of Being Human plugs, which may or may not be handled by a Public Relations team.
![Salman Khan](https://wp.missmalini.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/salmansm2.jpg)
The analytics company that did this research (Asterii Analytics) explained to DNA how they went about picking Salman Khan as the winner for this award:
“We used sophisticated web analysis tools to scan millions of pages on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube, blogs and online forums to quantify the total volume of buzz and conversations on our cine stars. A specially designed four-phase methodology was used. A shortlist of 30 plus possible candidates was developed in the first phase of the selection process. We developed 25 parameters to rank the candidates on the total volume of buzz, the consistency of the conversations, the responsiveness and volume of buzz by the fans, the quality and sentiment of these conversations and know indicators of influence scores.Using this four-phase process we came to a single score and the top three candidates were Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. And the winner was Salman with a consistently high score on each of the mediums that was scanned.”
![Salman Khan](https://wp.missmalini.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/salmansm3.jpg)
Which is fair enough, but like I said, a celebrity’s popularity on social media – particularly in Salman Khan’s case – does not, in fact, have much to do with the best use of social media. Salman Khan undoubtedly has the biggest fan following offline, which is why it makes sense that the conversation continues online, but that’s all due to his achievements as an actor – not because he’s an awesome tweeter. Even when we consider the sheer number of followers he has (which is huge), it seems to me that the only thing he had to do in order to guarantee this number was to sign up on the respective sites – of course his fans are going to follow him anyway, regardless of the things he does on the platform. Which is why a Best Use of Social Media award seems pretty pointless to me, because why create yet another award to applaud someone for their popularity? Zee already has the Best Popular Actor award. Which, incidentally, Salman Khan won.