May 9--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. 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 Scottish singing sensation 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 buzzworthy catchphrases, 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 product.

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

Bristol Palin swamped Yahoo's "hottest search" term ranking this week, in fact. Searches about her rose 956 percent day-to-day, as she and the father of her child dueled about abstinence education on rival morning talk shows. Palin on ABC, Levi Johnston on CBS.

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

In Florida, the number of people searching Google for anything flu-related now ranks as "Low," according to Google. Google doesn't even count "Swine Flu" or "H1N1" in its Top 100 most-searched terms list anymore, outranked by everything from a strip mall gas explosion in Maryland to Dirk Nowitzki. You know him, right

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.

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919.

-----

To see more of the Tampa Tribune or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.tampatrib.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, Tampa Tribune, Fla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NYSE:NWS, NASDAQ-NMS:YHOO, NYSE:DIS, NASDAQ-NMS:GOOG,

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.