The growing number of buzz-measurement firms out there, if they are good at anything, provide us with lovely graphs that capture the zeitgeist of human expression as history is happening. Or, at least what the Twitterverse defines as history. Today is no exception as we are still mulling the virtues of Apple’s new iPad. As I type, Apple has just two trending topics — #apple and #iphone — on Twitter’s top 10. A sign the public is already cooling on what appears to be little more than a massive iPod Touch that costs two to three times the original?Nah, can’t be.

The New York Times Research Labs  gives us a bit more insight into the crescendo of  iPad buzz that accompanied the launch news yesterday. The NYT reports:

“At its peak, iPad-related messages were coming through Twitter at an average of 2,200 a minute, and maintained steadily at around 1,500 a minute hours after the briefing ended… Five hours after the first mention of the word iPad, it had been Tweeted more than 100,000 times.”

More than 100k, that’s pretty impressive. But, nope, that’s no “moon shot.”

Incredibly, not a single fellow geek has yet to set up an “iPad” tracker on one of my favourite free tools, Trendrr; so I just did. I’ll update this post in the next few hours to see where the level of chatter is at today.