Pankaj Nangia/BloombergShashi Tharoor, India’s former minister of state for external affairs, attends the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit in New Delhi, in this Nov. 9, 2009 file photo.Indian Twitter users just got judged in a popularity contest.
The articulate Shashi Tharoor, a member of India’s lower house of Parliament and a prolific user of Twitter, is the most influential Indian in social media living in India, a newly compiled ranking says.
Pinstorm, a search marketing firm based in India, compiled a list of the most influential Indians in social media. It used Klout and PeerIndex, Web sites that rate social media influence, to come up with this ranking.
Mr. Tharoor, along with Rajdeep Sardesai, editor in chief of a news network, and the cricketer Virender Sehwag were the only non-Bollywood tweeters that made it to the top 10 Indian residents. Actress Madhuri Dixit was the top woman at No. 4, followed by another star Preity Zinta at No. 10 and Kiran Bedi, an activist and former police officer, at No. 11.
In the non-resident Indian list, the actor and stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari was ranked the top “influencer.” He beat out Deepak Chopra, the technology writer Om Malik and Sree Sreenivasan, a Columbia University journalism school professor.
Among Indian politicians, Mr. Tharoor once again came out on top. He was followed by Janlokpal, not an individual but a proposed anti-corruption agency, and Narendra Modi, the controversial Gujarat chief minister. India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, slipped in at No. 7.