Facebook: More buzz about Tucson shooting than for Obama's inauguration

The tragedy in Tucson is spurring reaction on Facebook that rivals Barack Obama's presidential inauguration.

According to Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg, there were 3 million status updates about the shooting over the weekend.

Those statistics record information only from public, open data. That means the statistics are representative of people who have publically available profiles, and limited privacy settings.

For that reason, the real number of status updates about the shooting is likely two or three times higher, Zuckerberg said, since most users have some privacy settings for their account.

To put these statistics in perspective, there were only 2 million status updates about the Obama inauguration, according to Zuckerberg.

The social networking site has also been tracking trending topics related to the shooting. According to Facebook's Andrew Noyes, those topics include:

• "Sarah Palin" -- Did Sarah Palin's words incite this behavior?
  
• "gun control" -- Do we need tighter gun control?
  
• "mental health" -- Do we need better mental health reform?
  
• "9 year old" -- People seem to be deeply upset by the death of the 9-year-old girl
  
• "Tea Party" -- Again, this is a discussion with deep debate on both sides

Noyes said the dialogue has been world-wide, not just limited to the United States, and that on Monday alone, several dozen members of Congress have gone onto Facebook to weigh in on the tragedy too.

Watch our full interview with Noyes about the role of Facebook in this tragedy in the attached video player.

Have you posted Facebook status updates about the shooting? What did you say? Add a comment below or soundoff on the 2News Facebook page .