Tech Drives Online News Agenda

In a week when the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico dominated the mainstream press, the social media were focused on news that revolved around computer technology.

For bloggers, the main subject was the ever-popular social networking site, Facebook. For the week of May 24-28, more than a third (37%) of the news links on blogs were about the site and its role in the online privacy debate, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. On Twitter, the Facebook issue did not register as a top story. But 51% of the week's links focused on a series of developments involving computer giant Apple, including news that it had moved past Microsoft as the world's largest tech company. The continuing drama in the Gulf of Mexico-which included a failed attempt to cap the oil leak and a presidential press conference-failed to register as a top-five topic in blogs or on Twitter, despite leading the traditional media, at 38% of the newshole.