2006 is officially the year the Internet caught a social disease. Searches related to social media sites take up eight of ten positions on the 2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist report, reaffirming Time Magazine’s person of the year. The person of the year was You, in case you missed the memo.
Last year, the searching masses were only beginning to hunt for places like MySpace and Wikipedia, falling back on the more familiar news-driven operant conditioning that had them still scoping out Janet Jackson, Hurricane Katrina, and Xbox 360.
But 2006 was different. Not just different. A clear revolution.
The Top 10 Google Searches in 2006:
1. Bebo – Britain’s answer to MySpace
2. Myspace – Murdoch’s answer to how to make money online
3. World Cup – France’s answer to where head butting is acceptable
4. Metacafe – The other YouTube
5. Radioblog – Where bloggers practice extreme annoyance and how to crash Firefox
6. Wikipedia – Where wikiality and truthiness prevail
7. Video – Because searchers don’t know how to be more specific
8. Rebelde – What’s better than Catholic schoolgirls? Catholic schoolgirls in Spanish, apparently.
9. Mininova – Next year’s acronym magnet (DRM, MPAA, RIAA, DOJ)
10. Wiki – Because the downside of Web 2.0 is you have to say things that sound silly.
For comparison purposes, here’s 2005’s top ten Google searches, in all their bipolar, shallow, perverted and phantasmagoric splendor:
1. Janet Jackson
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. tsunami
4. xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt
6. Michael Jackson
7. American Idol
8. Britney Spears
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Harry Potter
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