TrendIn: Your Favorite Moments from CES

There was so much CES news trending on LinkedIn this week, you'd think our entire 200-million membership descended on Las Vegas. Here are the products and companies that got you talking the most.

Samsung was the week's clear winner. Apparently not satisfied with just the buzz of a stellar fourth quarter, the Korean company introduced a slew of new TVs (smart, ultraHD, even a curved OLED concept), a flexible screen, a new Galaxy Tab, ultrabooks, cameras, a smart refrigerator... And to top it all off, it enlisted Bill Clinton as its own sandwich man.

Panasonic's hire, Danny De Vito, frankly can't compare with a former two-term US president. But the Japanese competitor was not be to outshined and so it presented the world's largest OLED TV – a whopping 56-inch. Who said TV was dead?

The conference's keynote, usually a Microsoft show, went to a company little known from the consumer audience: Qualcomm, a semiconductor manufacturer.

Well, consumers know it now, thanks to its bizarre #bornmobile performance, complete with actors playing three hilariously broad stereotypes: teen, gamer and technophile business man. The event had Twitter buzzing. And that wasn't all! Also sharing the stage: Steve Ballmer, Star Trek actress Alice Eve, Big Bird returning from a dangerous election season, Maroon 5 singing a song those watching the livestream couldn't hear, a gory scene from Blade II and... Archbishop Tutu? So the jury's out: was this a hot mess... or a brilliant move? It sure got you talking...

Speaking of mobile, the addicts among you that can't part with their device in the bathtub got excited about one product: the Sony Experia Z. It can stay up to a half hour in water without damage. Apparently, that's a common feature in Japan but it just hadn't taken over the Western world yet. Now they just need to make one that survives being dropped on the sidewalk...

And if you thought smartphones and tablets had killed the portable game console, think again. Nvidia released a (distant) parent to the Gameboy of your youth: Project Shield can play Android games or stream from a Steam library. "We imagined a device that would do for games what the iPod and Kindle have done for music and books, letting us play in a cool new way," said CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. A bold move for a company known for working under the hood of gaming systems, but never on its own.

So with all this drowning out all other conversation on LinkedIn, can you imagine, as my colleague John Abell argues, that "this will be the last year CES matters"? Let's check the numbers next January.

So what was YOUR favorite moment of CES? This was mine (courtesy of The Verge).

Photo credits, in order of appearance: SamsungTomorrow/Flickr, PanasonicUS/Flickr, Zane Aveton/Flickr, Sony, Nvidia.
Thanks to LinkedIn senior data scientist Viet Ha-Thuc for putting together the data.