December is traditionally the time when we sum up and recall the events and highlights of the year that almost was.
Through their annual Zeitgeist report, those evil people from Google have revealed that “Facebook” was 2009’s top “search query” — which basically confirms my suspicions that people have become too lazy to type “facebook.com” into an address field or plain too dumb to bookmark the site.
Other top searches included “hotmail”, “youtube”, “gmail”, “yahoo” (a touch of irony there), “ebay”, “myspace”, “bebo” and “google”.
Yes, you saw right: google!
Come on, seriously: Why the fuck would anyone google for “Google”?
“Spotify” takes top honours in Sweden (where, at least, it’s available), and South African mobile operator MTN ranked high amongst Nigerians (as did “aero” and “opera”, unlike in other countries). “Nasza klasa” (a Polish social networking service) scored unusually high points in European countries that are not Poland, as did the “Schweinegrippe” H1N1 outside of Mexico. Perennial chart-topper Michael Jackson notches up another posthumous award by grabbing the number-one spot on my personal favourite category, “Death of the Year”, beating out last year’s “deleb” Heath Ledger.
Along those lines, it would appear that Australians are a disturbingly morbid bunch. While the world was mourning and googling MJ, they pre-emptively mourned some famous figures who are still very much alive and kicking with search terms such as “jeff goldblum dead”, “kanye west dead” (wishful thinking?), “miley cyrus dead” (nauseated?), “emma watson dead” (why?), and “rick astley dead” (been rick-rolled once too often?)
US-based marketing firm Zeta Interactive have come to the similar conclusion that death does perform wonders for a celebrity’s popularity. The most positive “buzz” was received by Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift, and Patrick Swayze (in that order).
At the other end of the scale there were Rihanna-beater Chris Brown, rude-mouth Kanye West, part-time carpetmuncher Lindsay Lohan, chav Amy Winehouse, the “famous for being famous and giving good head” Paris Hilton and off-course Tiger-in-the-sack Woods who suddenly fell from grace as a closing stroke for the year that ends the decade called, suitably, the “noughties”.
It was also in 2009 that the internet (not unlike yours truly) celebrated its 40th birthday (it’s a mere co-incidence, rest assured) and “twitter” (n.) became the most popular word of the year while “unfriend” (v.) entered the New Oxford American Dictionary.
However, another fallen fairy’s master stroke (that’s a pun, look it up) may still be upon us as the race for the coveted UK Christmas #1 single gets underway now that the hugely-popular Queen + The Muppets YouTube video is given an official release!
Closing this posting on another musical note, according to some reports the production and sales of vinyl (you know, “records”) have also increased in 2009, almost like the popularity of this old doodle that keeps turning up in the most unexpected of places.
Maybe I should’ve spent more than just a few minutes on it.
Photo credits: Google, Unknown via hmvh
