Лара Датта (Lara Dutta)

Mumbai, July 22 (IANS) Actress Lara Dutta is the most popular celebrity on the UTV voice blog with more than 2.25 lakh followers, while John Abraham is a close second with 85,000.

UTV New Media has signed on 17 celebrities to join their voice blogging and apart from Lara, Johh, Neetu Chandra, Riya Sen, Cyrus Broacha and R. Madhavan have joined the activity. They are voice blogging through their mobile phones.

'There are more than 2 million mobile users in the country who do not have access to Twitter, Facebook and do not have the knowledge to understand the operations of other social networking sites. But they are crazy about cinema and celebrities,' Manish Agarwal, CEO of UTV New Media told IANS.

'So we are using this technology to bring them closer to cinema and their favourite celebrities. This service is targeted more at the people of small towns, who want to know about celebrities,' he added.

A consumer has to pay Rs.10 per month to avail service where people can have a direct access to their favourite actors.

Every artiste has a chance to increase his or her customer base and they are paid according to the number of people they can attract.

'We charge a customer Rs.10 for 30 days service for any celeb he or she follows. Of this, Rs.7 goes to the mobile operator, Re.1 to the celeb and the rest comes to us,' said Agarwal.

'We have witnessed a very good response for this service. We already have so many followers for different celebrities. Now our goal is to partner with more celebrities from Bollywood.'

A typical voice blog lasts between 45 seconds to a minute. To keep the technology simple, the company allows celebs to record their blog from anywhere and post it to the main server. At present, the blogs are not censored unless an actor specifically requests for it.