What are we searching for?

We already know people are searching for the weather and adult-material, these stats aren’t interesting. What is interesting is Google’s fastest rising search terms globally. This year, it looks like we are searching for friends and communication tools.

10. Club Penguin
Club Penguin is a multi-player online world for children, launched in 2005. Players can talk to each other and earn virtual money. Walt Disney recently bought Club Penguin for $700m and will be launching a UK-version mid-2008. You can still go play the US version though.

Penguins have become a popular search term, which seems to have been sparked by the surprise hit documentary March of the Penguins back in 2005, which grossed over $77 million in the US and Canada. Film-makers were quick to jump on peoples penguin preoccupation and released the animated film Happy Feet in 2006 and the ‘mockumentary’ film Surf’s Up in 2007.

9. hi5
Another social networking site, hi5 allows people to make profiles that display information about themselves, and ‘connect’ with other people on the site.

Social networking has exploded in 2005 thanks to sites like MySpace and Facebook.

8. Second Life
Again, another social application. Second Life is a virtual world created by it’s users. Residents can offer their own products and services and sell these for ‘Linden Dollars’. Some people have even been able to make a sizeable income from Second Life. The downloadable viewer client is open source and can be improved and modified by anyone.

7. eBuddy
eBuddy allows you to login to various instant messaging services without downloading any software. Personally, I prefer Meebo.

6. YouTube
YouTube was created back in 2005 by three ex-Paypal employees. It uses Adobe Flash to stream videos and allows users to embed movies into their own websites. Today it is the 4th most popular website.

5. Webkinz
I hadn’t heard anything about Webkinz before looking into this list. They are stuffed animals that come in many cute varieties. Each toy comes with a secret code that allows you to ‘adopt’ a virtual version of the animal on the Webkinz website and look after it. A bit like a Tamagotchi or NeoPets.

I feel strangely compelled to buy one…

4. DailyMotion
DailyMotion is a site very similar to YouTube, but with much better video quality. Definitely worth a look.

3. Facebook
Facebook is the social networking site founded by Mark Zuckerberg back in 2004, but has only been open to all internet users since 2006. It has recently allowed developers to create their own applications which build upon the Facebook Platform.

2. Badoo
Badoo is another social networking site, but unusually has no adverts. Has a very snazzy interface for viewing and rating photos. Launched in 2006 and now has over 12 million registered users. Although they are based in London, they are most popular with users in Italy.

1. iPhone
Apple’s ‘revolutionary’ iPhone has been a hot topic this year. It has received a lot of media attention and hype worldwide. I’d really like one of these but I may hold out until they increase the storage above 8GB.