Nathalie Bardou / AP

Participants of a vigil for Malala Yousufzai hold a poster of the shooting victim on Oct. 11 in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Updated at 5:30 p.m. ET: The family of Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for speaking out for the right to an education, arrived at a hospital in Britain Thursday to be reunited with her, NBC News has learned.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik announced that Yousufzai was able to speak and had talked to her parents by telephone, The Associated Press reported. 

On Oct. 15, Yousufzai was transferred to a hospital in the English city of Birmingham to receive specialized treatment for the injuries she suffered earlier in the month.

Her father, mother and two younger brothers were making the trip to Britain, Pakistani and British sources told NBC News.

Pakistan's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, accompanied them.

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In a statement recorded for Pakistani state television, her father, Ziauddin Yousufzai, said his daughter would return home after her medical treatment, the AP reported.  It was the first time he had spoken publicly since the Oct. 9 shooting in northwest Pakistan.

In the statement, Ziauddin Yousufzai dismissed rumors that his family would seek asylum overseas in light of continuing threats by the Taliban.

"I have seen doomsday and survived, you might say. Malala has been honored by the nation, by the world, by people of all classes of all creeds of all colors. I am grateful for that," Britain's Daily Telegraph quoted Ziauddin Yousufzai as saying in an interview before he left Pakistan. 

Can social media propel 'rock star' politician Imran Khan to power in Pakistan?

A spokeswoman for the University Hospitals Birmingham said Yousufzai was still comfortable and responding well to treatment at the city’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Tributes and words of support from around the world continue to pour in to a special message board on the hospital’s website.

Yousufzai began standing up to the Taliban when she was 11, when the Islamabad government had effectively ceded control of the Swat Valley, where she lives, to the militants.

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The attack on Yousufzai and two other girls as they left school was the culmination of years of campaigning that had pitted her against one of Pakistan's most ruthless Taliban commanders, Maulana Fazlullah.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Pakistan Shiite Muslims offer prayers during a funeral for community members killed in an ambush in the northern town of Gilgit on Feb. 29.

GILGIT, Pakistan -- About 20 men dressed as Pakistani soldiers boarded a bus bound for a Muslim festival outside this mountain town and checked the identification cards of the passengers. They singled out 19 Shiites, drew weapons and slaughtered them, most with a bullet to the head.

The shooters weren't soldiers. They were a hit squad linked to the Sunni Muslim extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, or LeJ. They had trekked in along a high Himalayan pass that hot August morning to waylay a convoy of pilgrims.

Here and across Pakistan, violent Sunni radicals are on the march against the nation's Shiite minority.

With a few hundred hard-core cadres, the highly secretive LeJ aims to trigger sectarian violence that would pave the way for a Sunni theocracy in U.S.-allied Pakistan, say Pakistan police and intelligence officials. Its immediate goal, they say, is to stoke the intense Sunni-Shiite violence that has pushed countries like Iraq close to civil war.

More than 300 Shiites have been killed in Pakistan so far this year in sectarian conflict, according to human rights groups. The campaign is gathering pace in rural as well as urban areas such as Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city. The Shiites are a big target, accounting for up to 20 percent of this nation of 180 million.

In January, LeJ claimed responsibility for a homemade bomb that exploded in a crowd of Shiites in Punjab province, killing 18 and wounding 30. LeJ's reach extends beyond Pakistan: Late last year, LeJ claimed responsibility for bombings in Afghanistan that killed 59 people, the worst sectarian attacks since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.

"No doubt - (LeJ) are the most dangerous group," said Chaudhry Aslam, a top counterterrorism police commando based in Karachi, whose house was blown up by the LeJ. "We will fight them until the last drop of blood."

For an outlawed group accused of fomenting such mayhem, the leader of LeJ is surprisingly easy to find.

Mian Khursheed / Reuters file

Malik Ishaq, leader of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, speaks during an interview with Reuters at his home in Rahim Yar Khan in southern Punjab province, on Oct. 9.

Malik Ishaq spent 14 years in jail in connection with dozens of murder and terrorism cases. He was released after the charges could not be proved - partly because of witness intimidation, officials say - and showered with rose petals by hundreds of supporters when he left prison in July 2011.

Although Ishaq is one of Pakistan's most feared militants, he enjoys the protection of followers clutching AK-47 assault rifles in the narrow lane outside his home. There, in the town of Rahim Yar Khan in southern Punjab province, Reuters visited him for an interview.

"The state should declare Shiites as non-Muslims on the basis of their beliefs," said Ishaq, calling them the "greatest infidels on Earth." Young supporters with shoulder-length hair in imitation of the Prophet Mohammad hung on every word.

Following the trail
To assess the LeJ threat, Reuters followed the group's trail across Pakistan -- from Ishaq's compound, to Gilgit in the foothills of the Himalayas, recruiting grounds in central Punjab and the backstreets of Karachi on the Arabian Sea coast.

In interviews, police, intelligence officials, clerics and LeJ members described a group that has grown more robust and appears to be operating across a much wider area in Pakistan than just a few years ago. But it had a head start.

The LeJ once enjoyed the open support of the powerful spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI used such groups as military proxies in India and Afghanistan and to counter Shiite militant groups.

Since being outlawed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, LeJ has worked with Sunni radical groups al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban in several high-profile strikes. Among them were assaults in 2009 on Pakistan's military headquarters and on Sri Lanka's visiting cricket team. Washington says LeJ was involved in the killing of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in 2002.

Now it is gathering strength anew. The risks are heightened by Pakistan's long-standing role as a battlefield in a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, which have been competing for influence in Asia and the Middle East since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

That competition has heated up since the United States toppled secularist dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq and left the country under the control of an Iranian-influenced Shiite government. Intelligence officials say the LeJ is drawing financial support from Saudi donors and other Sunni sources.

"Unfortunately, the state for strategic reasons turned a blind eye to the LeJ for a long time," said a retired army general. "Now we have a situation where it has become Pakistan's Frankenstein."

Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who is in charge of internal security, told Reuters that "we always take action" against the LeJ when the group is suspected of murder or terrorism. "We track people and arrest them."

When asked why those arrested are often freed, he said: "Look, my job is to arrest people, not to let them go. We all know who lets them off the hook and why," he said, referring to local politicians and elements of the military who turn a blind eye to their activities or even support them in some cases.

Sacred calling
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, whose name means Soldiers of Jhangvi (after its founder, Haq Maulana Nawab Jhangvi), isn't the only lethal militant group that once enjoyed patronage from the spy agency.

One is Lashkar-e-Taiba (Soldiers of the Pure), which fights against Indian control in disputed Kashmir. It is blamed for several deadly attacks on Indian soil, including the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, and an audacious raid on India's parliament in December 2001 with another Kashmiri militant group, Jaishi-e-Mohammad (Army of Mohammad). That raid brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

Another is the Pakistani Taliban. Its attack this month on 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Swat was only the most recent in a long list of strikes on civilian and military targets, mainly in the unruly tribal area along the Afghan border.

What makes LeJ particularly dangerous, however, is that the group is based in Pakistan's Punjab heartland. And it is not just attacking targets in Pakistan's neighbors, but has also targeted the state, including the 2009 attack on Pakistan's military headquarters.

LeJ was established as an offshoot of another anti-Shiite organization called Sipah-e-Sahaba (Soldiers of Mohammad's Companions).

LeJ believes it has a sacred calling -- to protect the legacy of the companions of the Prophet Mohammad - and it sees Shi'ites as the main threat.

Mahmood Baber, educated in a madrassa, was drawn by LeJ's call to holy war against Shiite infidels. His 16-year career in the movement ended in October, when he and other LeJ members were arrested.

Handcuffed and with a cloth thrown over his head at a Karachi police station, Baber described for Reuters the "great satisfaction" he felt killing 14 Shiite "terrorists" over the years. His voice choked with emotion when he said that for 1,400 years Shiites had insulted the companions of the Prophet.

"Get rid of Shiites. That is our goal. May God help us," he said, before intelligence agents led him away for a fresh round of interrogation.

The schism between Sunnis and Shiites developed after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 when his followers could not agree on a successor. Sunnis recognize the first four caliphs as his rightful successors; the Shiites believe the prophet named his son-in-law, Ali. Emotions over the issue have boiled through modern times and even pushed some countries, including Iraq five years ago, to the brink of civil war.

Demonizing Iran
The LeJ's leader, Ishaq, lives in a house whose gate bears a sign inviting residents of the town to debate whether Shiites are infidels.

These days Ishaq calls himself a leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba, the LeJ parent group. Pakistani officials say he still runs, or at least inspires, LeJ. Ishaq denies any wrongdoing, repeatedly saying: "I've been acquitted." He has indeed been acquitted 34 times on charges of culpable homicide and terrorism.

He does not hide his feelings about Shiites, his voice growing strident as he opened a plastic folder filled with printouts from what he describes as Shi'ite Internet sites.

One contained a photo of a pig, an animal considered by Muslims to be dirty, and is accompanied by an insult to Sunnis. Another alleges the Prophet Mohammad's wife committed adultery -- all proof, he says, that Shiites are blasphemous, and deserve punishment.

"Whoever insults the companions of the Holy Prophet should be given a death sentence," Ishaq declares.

Ishaq and other hardline Sunnis believe that Iran is trying to foment revolution in Pakistan to turn it into a Shi'ite state, though no evidence for that is offered.

The Saudi connection
In the Punjab town of Jhang, LeJ's birthplace, SSP leader Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi describes what he says are Tehran's grand designs. Iranian consular offices and cultural centers, he alleges, are actually a front for its intelligence agencies.

"If Iranian interference continues it will destroy this country," said Ludhianvi in an interview in his home. The state provides him with armed guards, fearful any harm done to him could trigger sectarian bloodletting.

The Iranian embassy in Islamabad, asked for a response to that allegation, issued a statement denouncing sectarian violence.

"What is happening today in the name of sectarianism has nothing to do with Muslims and their ideologies," it said.

Ludhianvi insisted he was just a politician. "I would like to tell you that I am not a murderer, I am not a killer, I am not a terrorist. We are a political party."

After a meal of chicken, curry and spinach, Ludhianvi and his aides stood up to warmly welcome a visitor: Saudi Arabia-based cleric Malik Abdul Haq al-Meqqi.

A Pakistani cleric knowledgeable about Sunni groups described Meqqi as a middleman between Saudi donors and intelligence agencies and the LeJ, the SSP and other groups.

"Of course, Saudi Arabia supports these groups. They want to keep Iranian influence in check in Pakistan, so they pay," the Pakistani cleric said. His account squared with that of a Pakistani intelligence agent, who said jailed militants had confessed that LeJ received Saudi funding.

Saudi cleric Meqqi denied that, and SSP leader Ludhianvi concurred: "We have not taken a penny from the Saudi government," he told Reuters.

Saudi Arabia's alleged financing of Sunni militant groups has been a sore point in Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned in a December 2009 classified diplomatic cable that charities and donors in Saudi Arabia were the "most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." In the cable, released by Wikileaks, Clinton said it was "an ongoing challenge" to persuade Saudi officials to treat such activity as a strategic priority. She said the groups funded included al-Qaida, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The Saudi embassy in Islamabad and officials in Saudi Arabia were unavailable for comment.

Shiite revenge
Some Shia groups do look to Iran's clerical establishment for spiritual leadership, but insist they have no aims beyond protecting members from Sunni attacks.

In the offices of a Shiite organization in Karachi, images of the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini are featured on a wall clock. There, a Pakistani Shiite woman named Shafqat Batool described what happened to her son, a judge, when he left for work on August 30.

Minutes after Sayid Zulfiqar stepped out of the family home in Quetta, she said, witnesses told the family three men on a motorcycle opened fire with Kalashnikov rifles. One of the assailants then grabbed a weapon from Zulfiqar's bleeding driver and pumped more bullets into her son.

It prompted Zulfiqar's family to move to Karachi. "We are not safe anywhere in the country," his mother said. "People are horrified, people can't sleep."

The fear is palpable in Quetta, the mountainous provincial capital of southwestern Baluchistan. LeJ has unleashed an escalating campaign there of suicide bombings and assassinations against ethnic Hazaras - Persian-speaking Shiites who mostly emigrated from Afghanistan and are a small minority of the Shiite population in Pakistan.

At least 100 Hazaras have been killed this year, according to Human Rights Watch, leaving some 500,000 Hazaras fearful of venturing out of their enclaves.

"We are under siege; we can't move anywhere," said Khaliq Hazara, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party. "Hazaras are being killed and there is nobody to take any action.

In Quetta and Karachi, Shiite leaders say they are urging young men to exercise restraint and buy weapons only for self-defense.

"We are controlling our youth and stopping them from reacting," said Syed Sadiq Raza Taqvi, a Karachi cleric, seated beside a calendar with images of Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

But with each killing, the temptation to take revenge grows.

Shiite extremists have not adopted the kind of attacks favored by LeJ. But they have hunted down members of the SSP.

One such case was an attack survived by Sohaib Nadeem, 27, son of an SSP member. Men he described as "Shiite terrorists backed by Iran" opened fire on the Nadeem family in their car. Nadeem survived nine gunshot wounds but his father and brothers were killed. "The Shiites are our enemies," Nadeem said.

Confederation of militants
When the Taliban and al-Qaida want to reach targets outside their strongholds on the Afghan border, they turn to LeJ to provide intelligence, safe houses or young volunteers eager for martyrdom, police and intelligence officials said.

"Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is the detonator of terrorism in Pakistan," said Karachi Police Superintendent Raja Umer Khattab, who has interrogated more than 100 members. "The Taliban needs Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Al Qaeda needs Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. They are involved in most terrorism cases."

The massacre of Shiite bus passengers outside Gilgit has had a profound impact on this mountaineering hub in the Himalayan foothills. Never before had Sunni extremists asked for identification to single out Shiites and then kill them on such a large scale.

Akhtar Soomro / Reuters

Police officers Jumma Gul, center, Khan Bahadur, right, and Gul Zaman, stand at the spot where bus passengers were gunned down in the Harban Nala area of Pakistan on Feb. 28.

Sunnis and Shiites, who had lived in harmony for decades, now cope with sectarian no-go zones.

"Sunnis can't go to some areas and Shiites can't go to others," lamented Gilgit shopkeeper Muneer Hussain Shah, a Shiite whose brother was killed in a grenade attack.

When violence erupts, text messages circulate rallying one sect or the other. Shops and schools close. Authorities have banned motorcycles to stop drive-by shootings.

Law enforcement itself is a victim of sectarianism in Gilgit, said police chief Usman Zakria. Shi'ite officers are reluctant to investigate crimes committed by Shi'ites, and the same is true of Sunnis.

"They are in disarray," said Zakria. "None of this has happened before."

Additional reporting by Imtiaz Shah in Karachi, Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Islamabad and Matthew Green in Quetta. 

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Wajahat Khan / NBC News

Imran Khan, seated at right, prepares to take part in his - and Pakistan's - first ever Google Hangout.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- In a country known for its constant chaos, nobody can make a crowd stop and listen quite like Imran Khan.

Khan's messages -- which almost always hinge on his apparent anger over the United States' demands on Pakistan -- make him the country's most-followed presence on Facebook and Twitter.  He is particularly popular among Pakistan's wired urban youth.  But while Khan's popularity online cannot be contested, whether it will translate into victory at the ballot box remains the big question. 

'Taliban Khan'
Critics contend that Khan is simply bitter about criticism he's received from established members of the media.  In particular, journalists and commentators question the former cricket star's popular but difficult to implement policies -- an end to official corruption within 90 days, cessation of all hostilities with militants, halt to CIA drone attacks and rejection of American aid.

Especially since the assassination attempt on 14-year-old education activist Malala Yousufzai, Khan's refusal to wholeheartedly condemn all militancy and terror has prompted his critics to call him soft on terror. 

While Khan's ideas have earned him the teasing but telling moniker "Taliban Khan" from members of the Westernized elite, they have proved wildly popular online.  

Pakistan's Generation Y battles to shape country's future

There is the official Facebook page for Khan (with about 487,000 'likes'). Its fans outnumber his party's official page by more than 100,000 members.

The "We Want Imran Khan to be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan" page also has more than 525,000 likes.

Wajahat Khan / NBC News

Badar Khushnood (foreground), a consultant with Google Pakistan, and a small army of Imran Khan's advisors and assistants tweet, shoot and text their way through the Hangout.

Khan also has about 400,000 followers on Twitter -- along with several assistants handling his and attached accounts -- tweeting rants, pictures and quotes from Pakistan's founders around the clock.

If social-media popularity equaled election results, Khan would already have a few terms under his belt.  In fact, so pervasive is his online persona that his detractors have branded him a virtual politician.  

However, while Khan might be the country's most popular political figure, he is hardly the Islamic Republic's most powerful; he boycotted the last election and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) or Movement for Justice party, has no presence in a parliament.

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Wired, but do they vote?
Whether Khan can translate online support into victory at the ballot box is highly contested. (When new elections will actually be held hasn't been decided although many expect them to be held in spring or summer 2013.) 

"Imran Khan's base, his core support, is urban, middle class and educated -- precisely the cohort that has access to the Internet and spends time online," Cyril Almeida, who pens one of Pakistan's most-read columns for Dawn newspaper, told NBC News. "Hence, his substantial online support. ... PTI is building a voter base starting from the social media."

 Almeida acknowledges that former President Pervez Musharraf -- who led the country from 2001 to 2008 and now lives in exile in London -- also has a substantial online following but "wouldn't win a local councilor seat if he stood for one."

"Imran is somewhere in between," Almeida said. "His rock star status online is wildly more exaggerated than his real-world support -- though he will win at least some seats come election time."

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Others, like Fahd Hussain, a primetime anchor at Waqt TV, which belongs to one of Pakistan's oldest and most conservatively aligned news conglomerates, says the Internet could still generate a Khan "tsunami."

"[The] social media support base of Imran should not be ignored," Hussain said. "It's massive and growing and creates political momentum."

Others question what online popularity will translate into, if anything.

Gibran Peshimam, the political editor of the Express Tribune newspaper, says that while Khan may be a heavyweight on the Internet, he is more of a lightweight offline.  

"The percentage of Pakistan's population that has access to the Internet barely breaks the double-digit barrier," he told NBC News. "In any case, the majority percentage of those who have this access to the Internet, and hence social media, is a non-voting sector. The well-to-do generally do not vote in Pakistan. They talk about voting, but barely any of them are even registered to vote."

"Large-scale support on the Internet in Pakistan does translate into numbers, given the youth bulge, but it certainly does not translate into large numbers -- unlike, perhaps, in the U.S.," he added.

Wajahat Khan / NBC News

Dr Awab Alvi is Imran Khan's social media guru. A part-time politico, Alvi is an Ivy-League trained orthodontist by day, and the brains behind the powerful outfit that is Khan's social media machine by night.

Echoes of Obama '08?
The comparison to the United States is a common one in Pakistan, and linked to the Khan camp's obsession with President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign in which social media played a key role in fundraising as well as getting younger Americans out to vote. So-called Khanophiles constantly point to the Obama '08 template as one that can be replicated, with some qualifications and modifications, in the Islamic Republic.

Two such Khanophiles are Awab Alvi and Faisal Javed.

Alvi is a tall, soft-spoken and self-declared geek who signs his emails as BDS, MSc & TED Senior Fellow.

Although Alvi, is a University of Pennsylvania-trained orthodontist who says he does not hold any office in the burgeoning PTI, the 36-year-old's non-stop Twitter feed gives him away as Khan's constantly-connected social media wizard.  His user ID, Teeth Maestro, one of the best known in Pakistani cyberspace, hints at both his full-time hospital job in Karachi and his part-time political potency.

His blogs generate as much revenue as a successful small business, and the official site of the PTI that he helps administer often crashes because of the high traffic his online events generate.  Alvi says the PTI has a 25-strong social media team featuring "volunteers scattered all over the globe."

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Faisal Javed, 31, is a telecom executive by day and a PTI deputy secretary by political leaning. He spends Monday to Friday at the chic Islamabad headquarters of Telenor, leading the Scandinavian cellular giant's advertisement buying and content strategy for Pakistan.

Wajahat Khan / NBC News

Faisal Javed is Imran Khan's deputy information secretary and acted as moderator for the Google Hangout. Javed's full time job is as a telecom executive, but he moonlights as a politico.

 But his evenings and weekends are reserved for the PTI.  Javed, who opens rallies for Khan, is known nationally as Khan's "stage secretary," introducing him to crowds across the country. His easy confidence and broadcaster's voice make him one of the more prominent young faces of Khan's media-savvy corps.

Behind the scenes at Khan's first Google+ Hangout, the zeal to replicate Obama's PR accomplishments was obvious.  As soon as Khan rolled in (along with a small army of assistants, advisers and bodyguards), Alvi and his team adopted a very American, no-nonsense mood that is not typical of Pakistani culture.

They kicked out all people dubbed "non-essentials" and started what seemed like a haphazard pre-battle briefing.

"How many people are watching me?" Khan asked.

"Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions might be watching," said Alvi and his lieutenants speaking over each other.

Khan: "What does this mean, 'Google Hangout'?"

Alvi/his geeks: "People submitted questions, and then voted in the most questions. In three days, 15,000 questions were submitted and 13,000 questions were crowd-sourced via (text messages)."

Khan: "Is this live?"

Alvi/his geeks: "Yes! Obama has done it too! Ten people from all over the country and the world will interact with you. The questions and questioners have been chosen. All you have to do is answer them."

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The audio wouldn't connect for 20 minutes after the Hangout was scheduled, and even as the event went online, some anchors on Pakistan's infamous conspiracy-theory driven national television denounced the event as a "drama" which was "staged" and "not live," much to Alvi and his team's chagrin.  

A small Twitter/Facebook skirmish between the Khan camp and his detractors later ensued, where both sides argued over the "reality" of the Hangout. The online battle lasted about a week.

But overall the Hangout event went pretty much as planned. Khan waxed eloquent about the economy, militancy, America, education and Pakistan's several other existential crises. He promised to raze the walls of governors' mansions, pledged to make them public libraries and explained progressive taxation to a female college student.

In what was perhaps the most important sign of success, the event caused #HangoutwithIK to trend on Twitter. But what really made political history in Pakistan was that the national conversation of the country was fully online and not broadcast on television and radio for the first time. 

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Later, Javed unwound with a Marlboro.

"You know why he did it? You know how he handled all those questions? Because he's neat and clean and has nothing to hide," he said.

What of the rural heartland?
Still, even if Khan's PTI wins seats in parliament on the back of his social-media campaign, he is still a long way from power, some analysts say. 

"The next step, to premiership, goes through the dusty, deceitful and a whole-lot-less-plugged-in territory of Pakistan's rural heartland," political editor Peshimam says.

Most of Pakistan's civilian power players have traditionally relied on the country's teeming rural areas for their support-bases.

Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party, which leads the current coalition government, is entrenched in rural Sindh  -- the country's second-most populous province. Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (N) has always relied on, and thus come to dominate, the lush swathes of central and northern Punjab.

Aid workers become targets in Pakistan

While Khan is pushing hard to topple the de facto but unofficial two-party system by becoming a third force via social media, Pakistan remains a poor and rural-majority country where just 20 million of its 180-million people are connected to the Internet.

Wajahat Khan / NBC News

Members of Imran Khan's press corps at work.

"Several polls show that as a leader Imran Khan is very popular," says Raza Rumi, director of policy and programs at Islamabad-based think tank The Jinnah Institute. "(But) there are methodological problems with such surveys and often their urban bias has also been called into question.

"Khan will emerge as a political player in the next parliament but it would be premature to say what would be the strength of his party," Rumi added. "His huge presence on social media is linked to a substantial following, especially in the young segment of population. There is a strong relationship here. But to assume that Facebook or Twitter rankings will result in electoral gains across Pakistan would be wrong."

But Khanophiles like Javed, the telecom executive, aren't discouraged by such such sober assessments. 

"We can't ignore this medium.  There are two million of us [supporting PTI on social media]. And those two million have millions of friends and family members," he said during preparations for the Google+ Hangout session. 

"And while you may be right again that those two million are largely in the cities, they are a degree or two away from spreading our message to the towns and villages. And that's good enough for me."

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