Blip.fm has Elvis deja vu (Credit: Time.com)

The social web was alive with Elvis sightings on what would have been his 75th birthday Friday. At least Blip.fm, a popular music sharing service, seemed to think the King might still be at the mall, according to this tweet from @NathanWurtzel: ” ‘Enter your postal code to find out when Elvis Presley is performing near you.’ Blip.fm #fail”

While you’re at the mall looking for Elvis you might as well catch the new movie Avatar, everyone else is. As reported by @mashable:

“…no other major blockbuster has employed a full-on social web marketing assault quite like Avatar. The results in its case were a $232 million opening weekend, a total of one billion dollars in revenue by year’s end, and the rank of #2 highest grossing film of all time. Cameron’s $500 million act of hubris has paid off.”

While Elvis has in fact left the building, Cameron seems to have retained his self-appointed title as “king of the world”.

Speaking of tacky, #tacky was a trending topic on Twitter this week, with all kinds of deep and substantive commentary on what might constitute tastelessness. Take this bit of wisdom from @ScorpionQueenB:

“#Tacky asking to borrow a tampon from the girl at the desk next to you and y’all barely speak.”

Too. Much. Information.

More oversharing was taking place on Facebook this week, where women started posting their bra colors, ostensibly to raise awareness regarding breast cancer. @Newsweek called it “Facebook’s Pointless Underwear Protest”. Others noted they’d rather see money donated to breast cancer research than have people engage in silly random underwear posts. Some women, like @mettawhat, just ran for the hills:

“I think I’m gonna stay away from fb until someone notifies me via text msg that the undergarment status posting games are over. #tacky”

Hey, at least it’s pretty harmless unlike the “Fruit of The Lunatic” (nod to David Letterman) with the wanna-be exploding gitch on a Detroit-bound plane. Now that’s an overshare, spraying your skivvies throughout the cabin.

As Jon Stewart cracked “”Even if the bomb works, there’s going to be 72 very disappointed virgins.”

Underwear exhibitionist Lady Gaga became “the new face of Polaroid” this week, as reported by DigitalJournal.com:

“Polaroid has announced that pop and fashion sensation Lady Gaga will be the company’s new creative director and inventor of specialty products.”

My reaction – Polaroid still exists? What’s next – Smi9th Corona? With any luck they won’t figure out how to get those little squares of film onto Facebook, sparing us even more Gaga.

Buggy whips and Polaroid aside, technological wizardry was front and center in trending topics this week as the giant international Consumer Electronics Show (CES) got underway in Vegas. From a cell phone powered by Coke, to new “electronic newspaper” readers, a smart phone by Google/HTC, huge TVs, tiny projectors, and virtual keyboards the future was on display, to the absolute delight of the digerati.

National Post reporter Matt Hartley (@thehartley) kept all us geeks wired in to CES with snippets from the floor and more complete coverage on financialpost.com. Among his observations; “RIM wastes no time getting into the swing of things at #CES and unveils the BlackBerry Presenter … Looks like this is absolutely the year of the tablet and the ereader … Google, Dell and Apple all have phones. I think I’m going to launch my own smart phone. The Hartley 5000.”

Unlike Google’s Nexus One at least the Hartley 5000 should work on Canadian wireless networks. No word on a Lady Gaga endorsement.

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.

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