The U.S. economy is in shambles. Global warming is melting the polar ice caps. General Motors re-entered Wall Street with a new IPO. The FDA warned of dangers in caffeinated alcohol drinks. FarmVille creator Zynga announced a new CityVille game. Google launched its first fashion endeavor Boutiques.com.

But all of these stories were overshadowed this week by Prince William’s announcement that he will marry longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton.

What does this say about our country?

The McRib phenomenon is generating buzz online this week, as the incredibly popular pork sandwich returns to McDonald’s for six weeks.

McDonald’s offers the product as a limited-time promotion to keep it relevant and appealing to customers. The result is a cult following, with blogs and fan websites dedicated to the sandwich.

We used Social Radar to monitor buzz. McRib chatter increased dramatically this week. The sandwich is currently being mentioned more online than any of the major fast food chain restaurants.

McRib chatter vs. McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell

Apparently absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

This week we cover the new Twitter.com, Internet Explorer 9, YouTube Live, debates around the tax cuts, privacy and Google’s fired engineer.

Seems like you can’t turn around without hearing the word “bro” these days. We decided to run some trend analysis, and it appears that “bro” is the new “dude.” Since July 2009 bro has been trending up, while dude has been trending down.

One of today’s hottest buzzwords ‘infographic’ wasn’t a major part of our vocabulary before early 2009. The chart below provides an interesting look at the rise in popularity of the word. Presenting data visually isn’t a new concept, but infographics are today’s chic choice for making complex data easier to digest on topics ranging from Facebook to text messaging.

The word infographic appeared in more than 3,000 posts yesterday. Do you generally find infographics useful?

Last week, the world received news of Tiger Woods being hospitalized with serious injury from a car accident. The world felt sorry for Tiger, wished him well, and waited in anticipation for news of his recovery. This week, the world has a different perspective. As details began to spill, the world had learned that his car accident was the result of Tiger fleeing from his wife as she chased after him, bashing his car with a golf club from news of his unfaithful behavior. How did the public react? How has the sentiment changed? Let’s do some research.

First, let’s compare the topics of conversation around Tiger Woods before news broke of his alleged affairs.

Tiger Woods Topics (Before News Broke of Affairs):

Tiger Woods Topics (After News Broke of Affairs):

Tiger Woods Sentiment Before Accident:

Tiger Woods Sentiment After News Of Affairs:

We then go on to measure which topics were being discussed the most around Tiger Woods chatter. Below are some of the topics we analyzed. We included some of the hot topics, including the names of potential mistresses being mentioned.

We also wanted to take a quick peek at the Nike. Let’s see if there’s any real effect or association of this negativity with their brand.

Tiger Woods mentions within Nike chatter

Nike Sentiment within Tiger Woods conversations

Nike BEFORE:

Nike AFTER:

Nike’s negativity did increase this past week, but not significantly. We can certainly conclude that Nike’s brand wasn’t severely affected by this mess. However, Tiger Woods’ brand certainly has been. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how this continues to affect his brand in the coming weeks.

Last week, the world was at the edge of their seats as they watched in horror, a giant balloon a drift in the sky. This giant balloon was thought to be holding 6 year old Falcon Heene. Thankfully, the story turned out to be complete nonsense. The opinions that people in social media have on the Heene family are not. This is a look at digital repercussions of this sad, sad, cry for attention.

Here’s a pretty picture of general topics of conversation. Looking at this word cloud, you get the jist of the story without ever having read or heard about Balloon Boy. Text highlighted in red appear with negative instances.

48% of all related posts about the “Balloon Boy” incident were not good. What do you expect when you get the entire state of Colorado riled up on the possibility that a child is drifting hundreds of feet in the air, unprotected.

And once again, microblogs take reign in traffic. If only Balloon Boy was old enough to have a Twitter account….

Kanye West is no stranger in the land of social media and has never had an issue drawing attention to himself, especially online. Silly antics keep Kanye in the spotlight of the blog and twitter-verse. Whether or not he has any idea how his behavior is affecting him, I have no clue. I do, however, have insight as to how everyone else on the internet feels about his buffoonery.

I looked to my trusty friend Social Radar to provide some data on reactions to Kanye’s random lash at Taylor Swift at last Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards.  (Here on referred to as “the incident”)

I ran a basic analysis on Kanye, notice that 88% of the results referred to him positively. People liked him, using words like “best, good, beautiful, and sweet” in relation to him. But then “the incident” happened, and so did this change in sentiment:

Looks like Mr. West should’ve considered the outcome of his actions! In just one day, because of this one “incident”, Kanye’s loving following of social media influencers immediately took to center stage, blogging, uploading pirated video clips, and tweeting their hearts away. And they didn’t have anything nice to say:

Notice the change in percentage of the frequency of these negative terms referencing Kanye; they’re all up! Also notice that one of the frequent terms is a Twitter hashtag (#fail).

And look at the role Twitter played in the “incident”. During VMA weekend, Twitter activity related to Kanye trended to increase nearly 50%! Everyone scurried to get their 140 character blurbs out. While no one can control what Kanye West decides to do with his public facing time, we sure can report on the effects they have on the online social scape.

What do you think of when you hear the word apple? A fruit that keeps the doctor away? George Washington? Pie? Nope.

How about consumer electronics. Welcome to 2009.

Brands often become ubiquitous words for their products, like Kleenex facial tissues. But who would have predicted 50 years ago that the fruit kids brought their teachers as a gift would be replaced in our language by a brand name?

There are hundreds of types of apples that can be used in countless recipes, but the topic cloud for the word “apple” (pulled from millions of Internet conversations over the last year) shows that technology-related words were far more prominent than recipe or baking.

To build the trend chart below, we used a massive query including all Apple products (iPod, iPhone, Macbook, Mac, etc.), software (iWork, iLife, etc.) as well as words associated with Apple (technology, software, computer, apps, features, developers, etc.) compared to all other apple-related content (excluding Big Apple, Fiona Apple, etc.).

What are some other examples of successful branding? What do you think of first when you hear the word windows?