All of the fighters of the Dragonball universe could not withstand the mighty Cupid this week as Valentine's Day knocked Dragonball out of the Lycos 50 top slot. Believe it or not, this is the holiday's first appearance at #1 -- last year, it couldn't take out the almighty Pokemon.
Once again, love poems (#26) make a Valentine's Day appearance on the Lycos 50. An interesting variation on these searches is the search for teen love poems, which I guess are love poems that replace "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" with "Shall I compare thee to Britney Spears."
Strange Valentine's Day fact: we receive a number of searches for Valentine's gifts for men, but virtually none for Valentine's gifts for women. Do men just not care, or do we just know that flowers and chocolate will do the trick?
(Note: This is a correction of what we printed earlier in the day, when we had women and men switched around in error. Apologies.)
WHO'S KIDMAN WHO: Then again, perhaps love doesn't conquer all, at least in Hollywood. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's impending divorce makes it to #9 on the Lycos 50. Not even counting searches for the divorce, both of them rose about 550 percent. The interest even spread to Cruise's first wife, Mimi Rogers, who saw her searches triple this week to make her more popular online than actress/sex symbols like Jennifer Aniston and Shannon Elizabeth.
As we normally do for celebrity marriages and breakups, we combined searches for both Cruise and Kidman. Had we considered them separately, Cruise would be #16 and Kidman #19.
REGIS' FINAL ANSWER: While Hollywood's biggest split of the week was huge with Lycos users, the biggest coupling of the week had only moderate interest. Regis Philbin's new partner Kelly Ripa doesn't come close to the Lycos 50 (she would need about three times as many searches) but she does manage to out-poll Kathie Lee Gifford, 90 percent to 10 percent. Not bad for a fairly unknown soap opera actress now thrust into the pop culture limelight.
XFL SURVIVES: While television ratings for the fledging football league fell, the XFL went up a spot on the Lycos 50 after its first week. The cheerleaders were so popular this week that they nearly made the Lycos 50 on their own (they finish #56).
Meanwhile, that other wacky pop culture phenomenon, Survivor, actually drops three slots this week to #10. Nobody will be kicking the show off the Lycos 50 island quite yet, however. Can you kick someone off a whole continent?
SHORT SUBJECTS: IT's back -- Dean Kamen's appearance on 60 Minutes II puts the mystery invention IT/Ginger (#36) back in the Lycos 50? 27 percent of George W. Bush (#48) searches asked for information on his tax cut plan? Despite continued interest in April's draft, the NFL drops off the list after 28 weeks? Anna Kournikova also falls just short of the Lycos 50 (she's #52), but she'll be back on next week's list thanks to yesterday's virus scare? We'll also see the ramifications of Monday's Napster (#5) ruling next week, but for now the anticipation seems to have boosted searches for the alternative Gnutella (#40).
NEW THIS WEEK: Cruise-Kidman divorce, Blockbuster movie Hannibal, love poems, IT/Ginger, Gnutella, Oprah Winfrey, Digimon, Mardi Gras, George W. Bush.
DROPOUTS: Super Bowl, Super Bowl commercials, Groundhog Day, Attila the Hun, India earthquake, Anna Kournikova, NFL, U.S. Postal Service, Lord of the Rings.
BIGGEST RISE: NASCAR, up 18 places to #27.
BIGGEST DROP: The Beatles, down 15 places to #50. Yet they hang on to a thirteenth week on the list. It isn't often a group that broke up thirty years ago snags a place on the cover of Rolling Stone proclaiming them "The World's Hottest Band!"
ONE YEAR AGO: Rosa Parks debuted on the Lycos 50 at #38. This year, black history month seems to be much less popular online. It ranks only #21, as opposed to #8 last year at this time, and of the major historical African-American figures, only Martin Luther King, Jr. (#37) is close to making the Lycos 50.
TOMORROW: A look at yesterday's Oscar nominations, and Lycos users predict the winners.
