Beginning sometime around our gentle transition into the autumn season, the word “Halloween” began appearing as a trending topic on the minds of many a realtime search monger. While it’s true a good deal of the hubbub is merely result of users reading up on their favorite spooky sugar-coated candies or attempting to get a head start on finding the perfect costume, (like @trexy79 who’s considering stealing my costume from 5 years ago,) not all of the Halloween buzz is centered around candy or fun dress up ideas.
5
Love it!
Uses for a Rotting Corpse on Halloween
10/19/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Because We Feel Like it2
Love it!
Love Affair With a Bad Romance
10/19/09 - Posted by Abdullah Saeed under MusicBeing Twittophiliac and understanding “what’s so great” about pop songs go hand in hand, evidenced by the massive response Lady Gaga’s new song ‘Bad Romance’ has garnered in the wacky world of status updates. Just leaving your realtime search unrefreshed for a mere 30 seconds will have you missing countless intentionally grammatically incorrect words of praise for the 23 year old pop icon who’s new single just hit airwaves today after premiering at the Alexander McQueen runway show during Paris Fashion Week.
15
Love it!
Faux Balloon Boy Becomes Instant Realtime Legend
10/15/09 - Posted by Jennifer Hodges under Because We Feel Like it, US
While the search was on to find Falcon Heene, a six year old boy who was believed to be carried away by a foil helium balloon, people turned to the realtime web to stay informed on his whereabouts and well-being. The child went missing from his Colorado home, leading authorities to think he had crawled into a homemade balloon basket before it was untethered, sending him thousands of feet in the air. However, when the balloon touched down over fifty miles away, there was no sign of the child. (Read more about the story here.)
While new updates and details were being released moment by moment, people took to their Twitter accounts to discuss the happenings. Within minutes of the story releasing today, #BalloonBoy became a trending topic, and in a ten minute span over 3,700 tweets with the hash-tag were featured. Some expressed genuine concern and sympathy, while others made light of the incredible yet tragic situation. Some one trying to make a quick buck even designed T-Shirts depicting a foil balloon with the words “Go Falcon, Go” on the front. Falcon Rick-Rolls were sent, Balloon-Boy Kanye memes were swapped, and even theories that this was a publicity stunt for the show “Wife Swap,” on which the boy’s family appeared, were whispered. Read the rest of this entry »
11
Love it!
Garth Preps for Vegas Cowboy Comeback
10/15/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under MusicThere are some people, that when you see their names trending, you assume them to be either freshly deceased, the subject of Internet death rumors, or newly accused of a heinous crime. Garth Brooks has been so safely stowed away from the limelight in recent years that his current nature as a trending topic had us fearing the worst, and teen twitter user @LouisaPaxton just generally wondering “Who is garth brooks?”
9
Love it!
With Great Power Comes Great Twesponsibility
10/15/09 - Posted by Jennifer Hodges under Because We Feel Like it, Gossip, Industry
Last night, thousands of status updates were sent out into the Twittersphere by concerned individuals who believed they were passing on an Amber Alert for a three year old boy. Descriptions of the perp’s Mitsubishi Eclipse and license plate spread like wildfire, and #98B351 quickly became a trending topic. Not long after, celebrity @KhloeKardashian retweeted it, triggering over 3,655 different tweets in the span of one hour. A simple search engine check up, however, would reveal that this “missing boy” alert had been circulating for over two weeks, a man-made story that could not be validated by legitimate missing persons resources. In fact, it had been tracked moving coast to coast, slowly infiltrating text messages, Facebook accounts, and other pathways of technology everywhere. Last night would just be the point it would make its trending topic comeback after a week of dormancy. Whether the alert was fake to begin with, or truly once genuine, was information hidden somewhere in the bowls of the internet. Read the rest of this entry »
4
Love it!
The ReadWrite[Realtime]Web Summit
10/14/09 - Posted by Carmel Hagen under Industry
This Thursday, October 15, ReadWriteWeb is hosting their first realtime web summit in Mountain View, California. Being a realtime search engine and all, we figured we should go, so we’re sending Tobias Peggs (OneRiot’s GM) and Robert Reich (Co-Founder and head of our developer network) on down to chat search, sharing, social web, and all the stuff in between.
If you’re going, be sure to keep an eye out for our boys. They love talking realtime - and they’ll love you if you’ve already read this.
Stalk ‘em:
6
Love it!
Riding Out The Week On Your Camel
10/14/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Because We Feel Like it
If you were to compare the working week to an animal what would it be? A dog, because of how hard you work from Monday to Friday? Probably not. A rat because of the way you’re constantly racing around to get that hard earned cheese before you hide away in your house for the weekend? Well, close but no cigar…actually not even a clove cigarette. If the trending topics are any indication of how the real-time internet user treats the working week you’d be hard pressed to find a better comparative creature than a good ol’ Dromedary Camel. Something seems to happen in the minds of a good deal of search engine users once they hit the weekday wall known as Wednesday. If I’ve noticed anything about real-time trending topics , it’s that like clockwork around noon on Wednesday the word “Hump” seems to be a hotter topic than the latest Lohan-fueled travesty or celebrity death-athon.
3
Love it!
Finland Delivers Broadband and Sunshine
10/14/09 - Posted by Abdullah Saeed under International AffairsWe often view the use of new technology as a privilege. Hell, we still say having a driver’s license is a privilege in a country where functioning without a car is practically impossible outside of a city. However, one country is taking the first step in recognizing that we live in an age of dependence on technology, not simply a time of increased ease. Today, Finland makes broadband a legal right, and the approximate 20 resulting Tweets per minute suggest that it’s a damn good idea.
Read the rest of this entry »
8
Love it!
Twitter Gets Caught in a New Phishing Net
10/14/09 - Posted by Christopher Reinhard under Industry
You have to hand it to spammers—they’re always coming up with new and different ways to ruin our f$%*ing lives. And given today’s trends, some crafty little phisherman has managed to hook the info from a whole lot of Twitter accounts in just a couple of hours.
Here’s the rub: countless Twitter users logged in this morning to discover that they had a new DM (always a joy) featuring a link to a video that, allegedly, included footage of the unsuspecting user doing god knows what. Since we’re all pretty narcissistic these days, enough people clicked on the shady URL which brought up what looked like the Twitter login page. Ipso facto, users logged in on the faux-Twitter and had their accounts compromised. Read the rest of this entry »
11
Love it!
Time to Celebrate the Awkwardness
10/13/09 - Posted by Jennifer Hodges under Because We Feel Like it
It’s not polite to laugh at other people’s awkward nature. However, just because it’s not socially appropriate doesn’t mean we can deny the humor in pictures of gawky individuals and the situations they put themselves in. Like a puppy with one leg in a lizard costume, these people make us want to chuckle and say “awwww, poor guy” at the same time. Recently the internet masses have caught on to these photographic gems, and a whole new breed of humor has taken Twitter and the wider social web by storm. Here are some of the best sites that celebrate uncomfortable individuals and moments like never before: Read the rest of this entry »
Buddy Up