Saad beats Shashi Tharoor
By Sumir Singh

On Dec 29, 2009,  Indian newspapers Mid-Day launched an online contest for the ‘Twitterer of the Year’.

The Mid-Day contestants included Shashi Tharoor (550 thousand Twitter followers), Anand Mahindra (10 thousand), Chetan Bhagat (34 thousand), Pritish Nandy (13 thousand), Vir Sanghvi (275 thousand), Mallika Sherawat (30 thousand), Priyanka Chopra (108 thousand), Gul Panag (34 thousand), Saad Akhtar (2500 followers) and Asfaq Tapia & Friends (2600 Twitter followers).

Brilliant satirist and cartoonist Saad Akhtar had the second least amount of followers.  Saad, with only 2500 Twitter followers, managed to garner the most votes.

Mid-Day collated the 6000 votes and has announced the winner of the ‘Indian Twitterer of the Year’.  Saad Akhtar, who created comic strip Fly You Fools has pipped Shashi Tharoor.  Between Saad and Shashi they garnered 65 percent of the votes.  The remaining 8 contenders mostly got low single digit votes.

(Techgoss had published the following on Dec 31, 2009)

Indian Twitterer of 2009
By Sumir Singh

Most national media, and smaller sites like techgoss, are a mixture of news, entertainment, sensationalism and gimmicks to engage their readers.  The idea is more readership means more revenue. These editorial policies also cater for a readership which would rather read about who Katrina is dating then what happened at the climate conferences in Copenhagen.

But you can be a serious newspaper and still grow.  Broadsheets like The New Indian Express, The Tribune and Hitavada all had double digit percentage growth in the last 12 months.

Mumbai-based Mid-Day is a powerful newspaper with a circulation of about 500 thousand. Tabloid Mid-Day is one sure way of getting a message across to the people who live in our financial capital.

On Dec 29, Mid-Day launched a clever gimmick to engage its readers.  They launched an online contest for the ‘Twitterer of the Year’.

How does one gauge who the contestants should be?  The Mid-Day contestants include Shashi Tharoor (550 thousand Twitter followers), Anand Mahindra (10 thousand), Chetan Bhagat (34 thousand), Pritish Nandy (13 thousand), Vir Sanghvi (275 thousand), Mallika Sherawat (30 thousand), Priyanka Chopra (108 thousand), Gul Panag (34 thousand), Saad Akhtar (2500 followers) and Asfaq Tapia & Friends (2600 Twitter followers).

Obviously, the number of people who chose to follow you on Twitter was not the sole criterion to make it to the list of candidates.  While highly regarded Shashi Tharoor has 550 thousand followers the brilliant Saad Akhtar has 2500 followers.  Mumbai based Asfaq Tapia and Friends with only 2600 followers may have been selected to provide a strong local angle by the Mumbai-based newspaper.

Even though the contest is only two days old, much of the final results will depend on how many Twitter followers you can convince to vote for you in the Mid-Day poll.

Brilliant satirist and cartoonist Saad Akhtar, with 2500 Twitter followers is currently leading Shashi Tharoor who has 550,000 Twitter followers. Expect the other Twitter contestants to start mobilizing their followers soon.