In what may turn out to be the shortest Twitter run ever, up-and-coming rapper Dolla (of Dolla Gang fame) was murdered just a few short hours after starting a Twitter account and posting his first and last tweets.

The rapper made two tweets before heading out to the Beverly Center, where he was shot and killed in the valet area of the mall's parking structure.

Dolla's death certainly isn't the first time that a Twitter user has died; it is, however, the first time we know of that a high-profile figure who used Twitter has died, and the timing of his having just joined Twitter left many Twitter users saddened. The rapper briefly rose to the top ten trending topics on Twitter in the hours after the murder was reported, with hundreds of users Tweeting "RIP - Dolla."

Dolla's final tweet was a shout-out to his Myspace page, which is also receiving a large volume of traffic from well-wishers and grieving fans.

The issue raises again an interesting question - what happens to social networking accounts after their original owner has passed away? There isn't really a legal stipulation about who takes possession of a user's social networking accounts, and they often become sort-of "memorials" to their late owners.