What gets online fingers atwitter one week, dies off the next

Swine Flu had its day in the sun.

For a while, H1N1 seemed to consume all the oxygen in the world of social media and online buzz. And early statistics by experts who track such things suggest the pig flu ranks as the No. 1 most-blogged-about topic for April.

But, that was so last week. Things change quickly in the world of online buzz. What's white-hot popular one day - well - anyone remember Susan Boyle?

Life online seems to have returned to a relatively normal state where much more garden-variety topics bubble up and down a Top 10 chart of popularity with each passing day.

Swine flu no longer even makes the Top 10 list of most buzz-worthy catch phrases, as tracked by Nielsen BuzzMetrics, which has computer algorithms constantly scouring Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and dozens of other Web sites to quantify our current fixations.

Among the current Top 10:

• No. 2: The Amazon Kindle "DX," the super-sized E-book reader that's designed for better reading of digital newspapers.

• No. 3: National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, and the inevitable linkages to Bristol Palin.

• No. 5: British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, and her moves to ban American DJ Michael Savage from airwaves in the Queen's realm.

• No. 9: And rising quickly, Kentucky Grilled Chicken, and the coupon shortage catastrophe caused by Oprah's endorsement of the fast-food project.

(No. 1 on the list is an Internet marketing scam. The others appear Spamish.)

Last week, Nielsen statisticians said "It has been impossible to escape the news about swine flu (or H1N1 virus)." But this week, "The volume of social media buzz surrounding the swine flu or H1N1 virus appears to have peaked."

So like floodwaters starting to recede, other all-consuming buzzy topics begin their ascension. That's good news for sci-fi fans. Twitter indicates the "top trending" topic is Star Trek.