Has Twitter become a Real-Time “Obituary” Page for Celebrities?

twitter Most of you guys will agree with me that there has been a celebrity curse going on after 4 famous people (Mark Sanford, Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett) kicked the bucket all in this week. Yes, it’s pretty unfortunate and my thoughts and prayers go out their friends and family. Well, if you look at Twitter’s trending topics, you would see that most of the keywords are related to the four deaths, especially pop star Michael Jackson. Even the Iran election which was on the top few placings for the past few days, has been knocked out by the massive tweeting of influential singer and dancer MJ. As a result, it was placed in the bottom few rankings. This has resulted in me thinking that Twitter has turned from a micro-blogging platform to a real-time obituary page.

In the past, most of the keywords placed on the Trending Topics list are mainly related to the latest technology stuff such as Office 2010, Opera Unite and Project Natal or international news like the December 2008 Mumbai terrorist carnage, H1N1 scare and the recent Air France plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean near Brazil. Since 6 out of 10 keywords listed on the Trending Topic (“Rip MJ”, “#MichaelJackson”, “Farrah Fawcett”, “Ed McMahon”, “Pop” and “Rest in Peace”) are regarding the deaths of these celebrities, shouldn’t the folks at Twitter just combined them together and formed a special category catered for those Twitterers in viewing these updates. Therefore, other trending topics (not as popular as those I’ve listed above) should take up the remaining vacant spaces. As a result, we wouldn’t get bored viewing tweets of the similar topic and even find out what are the latest trends on the blogosphere or physical world.

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By the way, the folks at Twitter have removed the Trending Topics list and the Search Bar from the sidebar. (update: both features have been back on sidebar again) Here are two possible reasons why they do so. First of all, all thanks (no offence) to MJ’s and Farrah Fawcett’s shocking deaths have resulted in a surge in traffic on Twitter for today. Probably, the servers have getting slammed with Michael Jackson tweets that they simply couldn’t take it. Another possible reason is that Twitterers are complaining that thy have been tired of the boring topics listed. Hence, they might have taken it away and work on a new version of Twitter Trending Topics list.