One year ago today we published our first Lycos 50 report.
Among that day's hot topics: Hurricane Dennis, singer Sophie B. Hawkins, the 5th anniversary of the Waco blowup, and the tip that Gundam might be the next anime title to take off. (It was.) The next day it was Daisy Fuentes and a tip that Reiki might be the next hot alt-health craze. (It wasn't.)
So in our first days of scouting we were already seeing the Internet's main fascinations for 1999-2000: music, breaking news (the more threatening the better), Japanimation and (as always) girls, girls, girls.
Let's check a few stats from our first 52 weeks.
Topics which have been ranked #1 (with the number of weeks spent at the top):
Pokemon (37)
Christmas (4)
Britney Spears (3)
Halloween (2)
Napster (1)
Survivor (1)
Hurricane Floyd (1)
(Note: we had three hiatus weeks when no list was released, bringing the total to 52.)
10 topics which have made every Lycos 50 list so far:
The Backstreet Boys
Britney Spears
Dragonball
Jennifer Lopez
Las Vegas
'N Sync
Pamela Anderson
Pokemon
Tattoos
The WWF
(Note: we started counting the Lycos 50 two weeks before our first public report, which is why those 10 terms are currently listed in their 54th week.)
That's four musical acts, three women, two Japanese TV shows/games, two actresses, one city, one body art fad, and one nutty pro wrestling league. But Pokemon has to be placed in a league of its own this year: 37 weeks at #1 seems like a record that should stand for a while.
Other thoughts about the past year:
MUSIC IS KING: From day one it's been clear that music is the A-1 favorite topic online. Most weeks we saw 8 or 9 musical acts among our top 50; besides those listed above, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Madonna, Metallica, Eminem, Sisqo, Christina Aguilera, Tupac Shakur and DMX were serious Lycos 50 regulars. And music lyrics (which is too general to qualify for our list) is always a heavily, heavily searched topic online.
HOMEWORK IS HOT STUFF: Capital punishment, William Shakespeare, Hitler, the Civil War, the Holocaust... all these terms were on the Lycos 50 this year, some of them for a dozen weeks or more. We think these searches are due to students doing research -- a belief that seems borne out by the way they've all disappeared over the summer. News flash: kids study online.
Also powerful on the academic beat: Black History Month. Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks all made our list in February.
ANIME ROLLS: We've talked about Japanese cartoons a lot this year -- yet we still rarely see the topic mentioned offline. Anime titles that made the Lycos 50 this year: Dragonball, Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, and Tenchi Muyo. The online audience is clearly crazy about anime, and that seems like a trend to count on for the future.
DOWN MEMORY LANE: Gosh, remember Y2K? Never made #1, but finally hit #2 on our list the last week of 1999. Other topics du nostalgia for this year: Elian Gonzales (as high as #4), the Love Bug computer virus (#3), the $360 million Big Game lottery (#6), Jennifer Lopez's Grammy dress (#4), the Blair Witch Project (#2 on our very first list), and of course the magically bizarre Darva Conger (#6).
KUDOS: No recap would be complete without a tip o' the hat to those who have helped create the Lycos 50 this year: research brainiac Doug Beeferman, executive boss-man Jonathan Levine, code tweaker David Yuknat, front page promo-guy Robert Bradbury, those traffic-driving kids on the Integration Team, and indefatigable PR Czarina Kathy O'Reilly.
And of course thanks to you, gentle reader. Welcome to year two.
