Photo credit: telegraph.co.ukhttp://www.communicatto.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=655&action=edit

It was a sobering start to Trending Topics this week with the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas dominating Twitter. Extensive reporting by @NYTimes provided regular updates on the shooting which killed 13 people and wounded 28 (other estimates vary). The New York Times used the new “lists” feature of Twitter to aggregate news on the tragedy from a wide variety of news sources, effectively creating a Twitter wire as part of its reporting.

One of those sources, @NewsChannel25 reported “Troubling portrait emerges of Fort Hood suspect: His name appears on radical Internet postings.”

Various Muslim groups, including @americanislamic, condemned the act as anti-Islamic and cowardly:

“@americanislamic Expressly condemns the shooting at Fort Hood. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected.”

The general populace mostly tweeted prayers, updates, and news bulletins, but the occasional post was filled with vitriol and hate.

News emerged this week that the general populace, at least on social networking sites, is changing dramatically. ReadWriteWeb, one of the top 20 blogs in the world, reported on new social network demographics; “As Facebook Ages, Gen Y Turns to Twitter”.

“@rww Twitter is the second-youngest of the top 4 SNS, median age 31. MySpace is 26, LinkedIn 39, Facebook 33”

Interesting how Facebook started young and is aging whereas Twitter started old and is finding the fountain of youth, no doubt due to Hollywood’s star presence in Twitterville.

Speaking of assimilation, Motorola launched its new flagship smart-phone “DROID” this week to much fanfare. Dubbed by some the “iPhone killer” (in a long line of wanna-be contenders), the DROID generated a lot of iPhone-like chatter but significantly less traffic at the mall. In the words of tech blog @engadget:

“DROID mania sweeps the nation, so to speak”

Mania did sweep New York thanks to the Yankees’ World Series win. Photos, video, joy and disappointment were shared, but, according to @calaggie, CBS Executive Leslie Moonves had a unique perspective:

“Heh. Leslie Moonves mentions ‘those pesky Yankees’ during the CBS Q3 earnings call”

He was probably miffed all those New Yorkers were at the parade and not buying TV ads.

Over on YouTube one of the highlighted videos this week was a CTV News clip posted by “thehillwatcher”. The clip exposes the hypocrisy of Liberals bashing the Conservatives on the exclusivity of the flu vaccine contract when it was the Chretien government that awarded the contract in 2001.

Finally, this week Calgarians learned the way to get the H1N1 flu vaccine is to be a millionaire hockey player, not a high-risk preganant mom. AlbertaCowpoke reported on NowPublic.com “Calgary Flames jump H1N1 Queue amidst Vaccination Clinic Closures”.

As usual, send your cards and letters with hashtag #RTWT on Twitter so I can highlight the weird and wonderful stuff you see on the social web, tweet me at @dblacombe or e-mail doug@communicatto.com.

Doug Lacombe is president of communicatto.com, a digital marketing, investor and public relations agency.

Recent posts

• Digital literacy key to success in Canada’s growing digital economy
• Blue Imp social media seminar follow up resources
• Biotalent social media boot camp resources
• Twitter trash talk shaves off pounds
• When warm & fuzzy goes dark & ugly, a #bashtag is born
• Third Tuesday World Kiva Day recap: A community within a community, within a community…doing a world of good
• When will IR ‘get’ social media?
• Book Review: The REAL Truth About Social Media
• 80-20 rule applies to social media marketing too
• Social media in 2011 and 2012