People’s search habits on Twitter aren’t so different from their search habits elsewhere; Ashton Kutcher may be the first Twitterer to grab a million followers; and an Arkansas judge says a juror’s reckless tweeting does not warrant a new trial.
At first glance Hitwise’s report on popular Twitter search terms you might, like I did, go “et tu, Twitterati?” Heather Dougherty’s top ten list showing Paris Hilton at the top seemed like a sure sign there’s just no hope for humanity if all humanity wants to know any where on the Web is whatever the hell Paris Hilton is doing.
Upon closer inspection that list is the top ten search entertainment personalities, which makes one feel only slightly better, considering all the entertainment personalities to choose from; I mean, really, the masses are still clamoring over her? Paris trumps Oprah on that list, who trumps Jeremy Davis, who plays a character on the show “Lost.” His fictional name, Daniel Faraday trumped John Mayer. (The data was taken from the last week of March.)
The most popular overall search term on Twitter was actually for “Twilight,” presumably driven by the movie’s DVD release and not people scrambling to find others making fun of it. The terms that follow are without explanation: redco and parkersburg.
Don Dodge
Presumably the Twitter searching populace isn’t searching for Ashton Kutcher because they’ve already found him. Microsoft’s Don Dodge calculates that at the rate Kutcher’s account is acquiring followers, he’ll have a million by April 21. Currently, he has about 750,000.
While most Twitterers appear to be engrossed in Hollywood lala-land, more serious issues have been afoot. In Arkansas, a juror’s bragging about handing over $12 million of a company’s money and advising his followers not to buy their products put the verdict in jeopardy when defense counsel cried mistrial for improper juror conduct. The judge thought otherwise, admitting the juror’s tweets were in bad taste bud didn’t constitute improper conduct
UPDATE: Ms. Dougherty has supplied the top 25 overall Twitter search terms for the week ending March 21. They are as follows: