There was a time when, to be a superstar you had to have Madhuri Dixit's brilliant smile, if not her acting skills. You had to have the star power that Thalaiva has to bring people to the theatres at 4 am. Or, Lata's or Kishore's singing ability. At the very least you had to portray a character on an addictive TV soap.

The internet, however, changed all that. First came the era of YouTube, where all you needed was a camera and original content. And then came TikTok which disrupted the entire homegrown superstar market and allowed a million users to reach a million viewers. Formerly Music.ly — the app for creating and sharing short videos of 15 seconds — was the most downloaded app of 2018. Most of the 'popular creator' (the tag TikTok gives its superstars, equivalent to the blue tick/verified) started on the medium about three years ago with Video Messaging Apps like Dubsmash. Musical.ly had better features like filters, choice of music, speed adjustments etc which allowed for users to be more creative. Its new avatar TikTok has easy-to-use features like — react, duet and share options which makes it even more addictive to create as well as watch. Which is perhaps why it's attracting users from across the spectrum of fame.