A lot of free publicity

Making sense of the good, bad and often strange trending topics online

A lot of free publicity

Making sense of the good, bad and often strange trending topics online

'Vaseline should be happy to get this sort of amazing publicity across the world.'
That tweet, by a certain Sorav Jain, came to be following cricketer Michael Vaughan's comment that Indian batsman Laxman may have used the substance on the edge of his bat to avoid detection by the hot spot technology.
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As Ant Simpson pointed out though, 'Vaseline trending should be useful if you're trying to squeeze your tweet into the 140-character limit.' Kartik Dayanand added: 'Move over Zandu Balm.

Vaseline didn't even need an item number to trend!' Even actor Stephen Fry got into the act, tweeting: 'Much talk on timelines about using Vaseline to cover up one's hotspot. Cricket must seem a strange game to the uninitiated.'

Fast track
Anna Hazare, who wanted to sit on a fast at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, was reportedly asked to look for an alternative site if more than 2,000 supporters gathered with him. Naturally, the Jantar Mantar began to attract much attention online. Someone called Raj had a request though: 'Dear Anna, please hold your fast at the Ramlila Grounds. Don't forget that Jantar Mantar is an important tourist spot. Leave it for kids and tourists.'

If wishes were horses
'Dear Santa' became an unusually popular topic, considering it is still four months to Christmas. Requests and questions to the North Pole's most famous resident included 'can I please get a pony this year; I have asked for one since 1996', 'how old were you when your parents told you that you were not real?' and 'is the only reason why you're not visiting my house every year because my house does not have a chimney?'

The last word
Filmmaker Farhan Akhtar finally noticed what a number of us have known for years: 'A Chief Minister forced to resign under a corruption cloud recommends his successor! Only in India?'