The fandom has migrated from bedroom walls to smartphone apps.
Bottling a perfume or lending her name to the latest Debenhams collection is so passé for actress Sonam Kapoor. She’d rather go the Hollywood way and have her 5.2 million Instagram followers obsess over ‘everything Sonam’ on an app.
While commercials and product endorsements are awesome, the new age trend for celebs is to have an app (or three), but before you scoff at the Kardashians for this (the entire clan has a dedicated app and the profits for each run into several millions!), Sonam is the first Indian celebrity to show such business foresight and launch an app based on her life.
Perhaps, this is what every fan girl or boy wishes for - an entire platform to obsess over their screen idol! So is the Sonam app a yay or a nay?
Sonam’s App Is (Obviously) Everything About Her
Confession - I am not a fan of Miss Kapoor or her (annoying Disney princess) voice so I put the introduction video on mute (unmuted it later to write this post, though!)
The salmon pink landing interface is chic, elegant font and a clutter-free user experience and the fact that it is free, are all a big plus.
The section My Life gives a sneak peak into Sonam’s world - her perfectly toned body, her lavish lifestyle, red carpet looks, nutrition advice, behind the scenes videos, makeup tutorials and a couple of workout videos.
That’s not it, you can even learn to bake red velvet cakes as per the diva’s taste. Sonam thinks these beauties are ‘jaw droppingly good’ and has even put the recipe below the picture, courtesy her BFF Pooja Dhingra, the owner of the famous Le 15 Patisserie in Mumbai.
Sonam Live lets you live stream and chat up with the actor but you’ll have to be really really glued to the app to know when that’s happening. And be armed with supersonic internet speed because the videos are so darn heavy, they’ll take an eternity to load and you might be bored by then.
Skip the fluff and come straight to the section Style Mafia - it is a fun, quirky section where Sonam, her stylist sister Rhea Kapoor and her makeup artists give us a peak into the star’s high-end life, a breakdown of her red carpet looks and some exclusive tutorials. We love the DIY style tips with step-by-step instructions on how to glam up and go a whole lot chicer like Sonam.
An App Is a Great Idea but Sonam’s Is Plain Vanilla!
Sonam Kapoor has the fifth-highest followers on Instagram in India. 8.9 million people follow her on Twitter. Clearly, the actress has done the futuristic thing by exploiting her digital clout.
Still, the app does not feel intimate.
Sharing is the norm for the fashionista. She pouts daily for Instagram, answers questions on Twitter and snaps on the regular. She is the digital baby who loves to share. But till now, the app content does not look premium or much different from the actor’s other social media platforms.
Perhaps, the mediocre numbers speaks for itself - just 10,000 downloads in over a fortnight of its launch. True, Sonam does not have the Silicon Valley magic like Justin Beiber, but even a Kylie Kardashian (the youngest of the ‘K’ clan whose Twitter followers are 2 million more than Sonam’s) app breaks the Apple store on the day of its launch with over a million downloads.
A personal app is a great concept but the content has to be novel and sincere because till the time celebrities sold apparels and perfumes, the branding felt coherent.
Honestly, I would love to see more pop-up alerts to watch Sonam live, get to know her fun side better, see candid pictures because humanity does not need another lame, pointless, selfie app.