Have you ever longed to be the first person to hear the buzz about a fast-rising trend? Here’s a clue. Get a weekly look at the movers and shakers among people and keywords by seeing what people around the world are searching at Lycos, a top Internet search engine, at http://50.lycos.com.
Dean Tsouvalas, writer of “The Lycos 50,” a weekly list of the 50 most searched for phrases, took a few minutes to share some of the very surprising range of topics — from the Pope to Pam Anderson — rising to the top of the list.
DANA GREENLEE: How long has the Lycos 50 been around?
DEAN TSOUVALAS: We are the first search engine to actually assemble a list like this. Weve been around for over five years. We track the types of searches that people are making every day. We dont track the people, we just track the searches and then we compile a list of the 50 most popular people, places and things that folks are searching for online.
GREENLEE: The Lycos 50 has become a very important gauge for the flow of people doing searches online. What is fascinating is the top searches are people, not what Id call search terms. It seems to hook up with our fascination of celebrities.
TSOUVALAS: I look at it more as the pop culture barometer: what will people be talking about at the water cooler? For example, this week the top two searches fighting neck and neck for the number one spot are Pam Anderson and the new Pope Benedict XVI. The fact is Pam Anderson did come out on top, but only by a very slight percentage of searches.
GREENLEE: What is the fastest rising search term?
TSOUVALAS: I can tell you of a couple movers and shakers. One that is very popular is the facebook.com, a college social networking site. As we come to the end of the school year, we find more and more people are looking at facebook.com. If you were looking at the girl next door in your class and you never had the courage to ask her name, you could find out about her by using the facebook.com. It started a couple of years ago by some young guys out of Harvard and you have to have an .edu in your e-mail to even be invited into the facebook. Its definitely a way for college graduates to network before they finish their year. Its also one of the biggest ways for them to date.
GREENLEE: Were there any search terms that turned you on this week?
TSOUVALAS: You know, one of the things that Ive seen lately is the fascination with crocheting. It is the hottest activity that folks are looking for online. Theyre looking for interesting and unusual crochet patterns. I am amazed that after Martha Stewart got out of prison she was wearing a crocheted poncho that had been made for her by an inmate. The next day online, searches for that crochet pattern were up over 250 percent in one day. Over the course of the week, it was up 1,800 percent.
GREENLEE: Its almost like youre sitting on a hotbed of nuclear secrets with the things you discover.
TSOUVALAS: The thing that is so amazing about this job and one of the things I love about it is we really get to see whats on peoples minds. When you look through the list of 50, its everything from Pam Anderson to the Pope to the NFL to poker to American Idol to golf to the IRS and to different music artists. What is exciting are the things that are just bubbling up beneath that 50 that are just beginning to capture a unique part of the public consciousness and it hasnt really hit mainstream yet.
GREENLEE: Have you noticed if people in the media look at your Lycos top 50 and make a story of it?
TSOUVALAS: USA Today tends to follow our column pretty regularly and does feature stories on things we sort of see. One we noticed the other day was roller girls. Do you remember in the 70s, folks were roller skating and there were roller derbies? Its hot again! The amount of searches for roller girls and roller derbies and the different teams has really grown just in the past three or four months. Its pretty wild.
To see the Lycos 50 or go directly to Deans column, visit http://50.lycos.com. Hear the full audio interview at http://WebTalkRadio.com
