Who Cares About the State of the Union? What Does the iPad Look Like?

The new Apple tablet didn’t fare as well in the blogosphere, coming in as the No. 5 topic, well behind the winner, which was the British Broadcasting Corp.’s airing of the first-ever film shot by chimpanzees (also, apparently, more important than the State of the Union).

According to the New Media Index, the iPad was the No. 1 topic on Twitter, representing 18 percent of new links for the week. It was followed by: stories about the economy, including a CNN poll finding that three out of four Americans believe much of the federal stimulus money has been wasted, at 16 percent; the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti at 13 percent; President Barack Obama’s call to end the ban on gays in the military at 8 percent; and the State of the Union speech, also at 8 percent.

The BBC’s The Chimpcam Project dominated blogs at 23 percent, followed by: a Jan. 24 column in The Washington Post by Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, offering suggestions to Congress Democrats for the upcoming midterm elections, at 11 percent; the death of author J.D. Salinger at 9 percent; a BBC News report about a French parliamentary committee recommending a partial ban on women wearing Islamic veils in certain public spaces at 8 percent; and the iPad at 7 percent.

As for YouTube, the five-most-viewed videos, in order, were: a comic report by Italian television host Elena Di Cioccio about her attempt to grab soccer star David Beckham’s genitals; Coldplay performing as part of the Hope for Haiti telethon Jan. 22; Fear the Boom and Bust, a satirical rap video produced by Econstories.tv; an alleged audiotape of Osama bin Laden; and French game-show host Christophe Dechavanne being physically attacked by an audience member who claimed that the vaccine for the H1N1 virus was actually a poison.