Hasta La Gadget!

Is it possible that the Super Bowl managed to offer up something in worst tast than the Black Eyed Peas’ collective wardrobe? That seems to be the opinion on Twitter thus far, as Groupon’s Timothy Hutton-fronted “Tibet” ad drew a rather tangible sense of outrage on the microblogging service. The spot, which opens with what seems to be an impassioned plea for the oppressed people of Tibet, turns on a dime, with that good will proving to be set up for a punchline about cheap food.

A quick sampling of some of Twitter’s top tweets on the subject:

• Groupon exploits Tibetan plight for giggles? Why? -@salon
• After their Super Bowl commercial, Groupon’s valuation has gone from $15 billion to $15 -@darrenrovell
• I guess Groupon decided to do a funny commercial about Tibet because Darfur would be in bad taste? #adFAIL -@BorowitzReport

A number of other comments took on a rather #kennethcoletweets-esque approach to criticism. Check out the ad after the jump, and let us know what you think.

If you were too busy prepping your Super Bowl menu this week to take a break and check out what’s happening on Twitter, we’ve got you covered. We took a look at what was trending the most on Twitter this week and compiled a nice little list for you to peruse at your leisure. You don’t want to show up at work on Monday a week behind the news, do you?

Here are the top trending Twitter topics for the week ending on February 4:

If living well is the best revenge, then surely SEO must be in second place–with a bullet. Take, for example, this young woman, who followed a bad breakup by bombing Google Image search with unflattering photos her ex.

An image search for the ex-boyfriend now turns up the same headphone a slew of times, each with an accompanying unflattering LOLcat-styled caption, such as “To be or not to be? LOLJK I can’t read” (many of the others are a bit too hot for this here gadget blog).

The victim’s mom flipped out at the discovery, turning to the Google Webmaster Help message board for assistance, writing, in part,

My minor son’s ex-girlfriend took a copyrighted picture of him (we own copyright) and uploaded it more than 60 times to a website. On each image she wrote slanderous, defamatory and pornographic captions. The webmaster of the site states he removed the images 6 weeks ago, but Google Search still shows all the images. My son is so stressed out and embarrassed and we’ve done everything we can to get images

The mother added that she has attempted to get Google to take the photos down on account of copyright infringement, to no avail.

Internet anger surely broke some speed yesterday after designer Kenneth Cole’s unfortunate attempt at humor [above] apparently stopped all of Twitter dead in its tracks. Nearly everyone with an “@” in front of their names took to the microblogging service to condemn Cole’s words, and they were, in fact, Cole’s words.

Cole quickly apologized in his next tweet, stating, “Re Egypt tweet: we weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment.” In the wake of the apology, Cole opted to keep the much re-tweeted post up–a historical document of sorts.

The spoofs, too, came at record speeds, with a number of fake Kenneth Cole accounts launched. @kennethcolepr sported the tagline “A disaster near you,” rose quickly to the top, becoming the default source of dark potshots at the fashion icon. And with it came the hashtag #KennethColeTweets.