Hip Hop Star Murdered Just Two Hours After His First Tweets

picture-68Here’s one of those stories that’s just kind of eerie and sad. About 13 hours ago, hip hop artist Dolla signed up for Twitter. He sent out a couple of tweets and presumably left to go to the Beverly Center in Los Angeles. I know this because he was shot and killed there shortly thereafter.

One of the trending topics on Twitter right now is “RIP Dolla” and hundreds more messages are being directed at Dolla’s now-dormant account. It seems that he’s gained several hundred followers since his death and a lot of people are using the account to pay their respects to him.

Celebrities are now rushing to join Twitter as it’s a great means of promotion. Dolla himself used his second (and last) tweet to promote his MySpace page where he sells his music. It would seem that this may be the first time a relatively famous person that actually uses Twitter (if only for a day) has passed away. And like a MySpace or Facebook wall, this is now another way for fans to pay respect.

This also brings up the personal privacy topic. Dolla did not have a chance to tweet out his location, but just imagine if he had. This would have potentially turned into one of the biggest location service/privacy issues yet. Sadly, it’s only a matter of time before that comes up with one of these celebrities using sites like Twitter.

The police have a person of interest in custody, with regards to Dolla’s murder.

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[thanks Eric]