Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare was Indian cyber-denizens' most popular personality during his 12-day fast demanding introduction of the Jan Lokpal Bill in Parliament, racing to as many as 3.64 lakh ‘likes' on social networking site Facebook.
Similarly, an account, named, ‘Support Anna Hazare's Fast Against Corruption', on the social networking site attracted ‘likes' from 1.45 lakh users.
On the other hand, another Facebook page, ‘I Hate Anna Hazare', could rope in just 4,137 members.
The Anna Hazare video recorded by Kiran Bedi in the Tihar Jail compound has nearly 1.6 lakh views on video streaming Web site YouTube so far and was rated as the second-most viewed video of the month in the Indian news and politics category, just behind a video uploaded by an Indian on the US debt crisis.
Another video on Anna Hazare's indefinite fast against corruption was ranked No. 4 on YouTube, with nearly 1.65 lakh views.
It also appears that SMSs containing the words ‘Anna Hazare' or ‘Corruption' are in high circulation, according to web-to-mobile free SMS service providers.
Nisha Parekh, Vice-President (International Operations) of SMS Country, which runs free SMS service 160by2.com, said out of the 5-5.5 million SMSes they handle every day from their Web site, nearly 1.5 million messages were related to Anna Hazare or corruption.
“We expect it to be around 3.5 million SMSes today (Sunday), regarding Anna Hazare ending his fast,” Parekh told PTI.
Ten days ago, 16by2 handled 1.34 lakh SMSes on Anna Hazare and the figure reached 2.6 lakh on Saturday.
160by2 has 13.3 million registered users, who use the site for sending bulk SMSes.
“Currently, ‘Anna Hazare' and ‘Corruption' are the most used words in way2sms messages. Messages containing the words 'Anna Hazare' and ‘Corruption' have been delivered to close to 13.5 million unique mobile subscribers in the last five days via our way2sms,” said V.V. Raju, CEO, Way2SMS.
According to Raju, along with social networking sites, users are largely using way2sms to express their support for Anna Hazare and in the last five days, they observed close to 3 million people using the name, ‘Anna Hazare', in their messages.