Zeitgeist 2008

This has been out for a while but I was unexpectedly out of commission for a while and it’s worth catching up. Google Zeitgeist 2008:

Studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times. We’ve compiled some of the highlights from Google searches around the globe and hope you enjoy looking back as much as we do.

Fastest Rising (Global)

sarah palin
beijing 2008
facebook login
tuenti
heath ledger
obama
nasza klasa
wer kennt wen
euro 2008
jonas brothers

Andrew Sullivan says Sarah in the top place bodes well for The Dish next year. Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch delves into the details noticing, for example, searches for “hybrid car” and “solar panel” skyrocketed during the summer right along with gas prices, then dropped just as quickly as gas prices came down. And the term “layaway” surged in popularity along with the economic crisis.

Over at Yahoo, Britney Spears tops the list (as she did last year) of top searches for 2008. Not to be left out, MySpace has its Top 8 for 2008 listing the most popular artists, songs, searches, performers, and blogs on the social network in the last year. And Q&A site WikiAnswers (part of Answers.com) lists the questions asked throughout the year by its users.

And for something completely different… Christopher Buckley at The Daily Beast put together the Old Zeitgeist Vs. the New Zeitgeist. Some highlights:

	Old	New
Worst U.S. President	Buchanan	Bush (II)
Reassuring African- American Leader	Colin Powell	Obama
Menacing Ruskie	Stalin	Putin
GOP Clotheshorse	Nancy Reagan	Sarah Palin
Toxic Substance	Asbestos	Collateralized Debt Obligation
Three Stooges	Moe, Larry, Curley	Detroit Auto CEOs
Spurious Casus Belli	Tonkin Gulf Incident	WMDs
Supremely Self-satisfied Talk Show Host	Bill O’Reilly	Keith Olbermann

Be sure to READ ON. His whole list is spot-on!

RELATED: TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington posted 22 minutes of video from his half hour interview with Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer.