How powerful is Anna Hazare on Facebook and Twitter?

afaqs! decodes the strength of Hazare and his 'India Against Corruption' movement on leading social media platforms.

Social activist Anna Hazare and his movement 'India Against Corruption' (IAC) has become significantly powerful on social media, especially on Facebook and Twitter.

More than 150 Facebook pages related to 'Anna Hazare' and 'India Against Corruption' have emerged in the last few months. Surprisingly, majority of these pages seem to be created by various enthusiasts, who do not form the part of Anna's official team.

For instance, one of the page titled, 'Join Anna Hazare's Fast To Bring the Jan Lokpal Bill' (
Facebook.com/joinanna
), created by a Mumbai-based Facebook user named 'Mohammed Zaid Shaikh', is followed/liked by more than 38,000 users.

The official 'India Against Corruption' page (facebook.com/IndiACor) has managed to rope in more than 3.2 lakh fans, so far. More than 13,000 of these fans joined the page yesterday, and over 60,000 users joined it in the last 17 days. (The figures have been derived from Facebook Analytics tool named Buzzref.com).

The power of Anna's movement can be gauged from the fact that the official 'India Against Corruption' Facebook page (with less than one million users) has managed to garner more user engagement than many leading brands, which employ dedicated resources for social media handling.

According to Buzzref.com, the IAC Facebook page received over 71,000 'likes' and 13,000 comments for mere 170 posts updated in the month of August. However, MTV India (Facebook.com/mtvindia, 2.9 million fans) and Dominos (Facebook.com/dominospizzaindia, 0.5 million fans) received 21,000 'likes' (for 59 posts) and 11740 'likes' and 1568 comments (for 41 posts) respectively, during the same duration.

The power of Anna's movement could be well seen on Twitter too. A humungous chunk of internet users posted messages in support of Anna on Twitter. Topics related to 'Anna Hazare' and 'Jan Lokpal' became the most discussed subjects on Twitter in India, in the last two days.

For instance, hashtag - #isupportannahazare remained the most discussed topic on August 17 with over 8000 tweets mentioned or used this hashtag. More than 9000 tweets cited conversations related to hashtag (#Janlokpal) during August 16 and 17. According to Topsy.com, about 15,000 tweets with the mention of Anna Hazare have been published on Twitter in the last two days.

The influential power of official Twitter account/handle of the movement (Twitter.com/Janlokpal) has notably jumped by six points in the past two days. The Klout score of @janlokpal went up from 68 on August 15 to 74 on August 17. For the uninitiated, Klout.com determines the influential power of a Twitter handle.

It's a great score, if we consider Klout scores of some of the most influential Twitter handles in the country, as shown by Pinstorm India Influencers list (which ranks most influential people/brands on Twitter). The list mentions Shahrukh Khan (Twitter.com/iamsrk) and Dalai Lama (Twitter.com/DalaiLama) with Klout scores of 77 and 86 as the most influential Twitter users in India.

And it's not just the common man who is tweeting in support of Anna but also the influential people such as Anupam Kher (Twitter.com/AnupamPkher, Klout score of 78), Shekhar Kapur (Twitter.com/shekharkapur, Klout Score of 72) are also fuelling Anna's power in the social media domain.