OMG, WTF, LOL, BRB, FTW

Ah, the internet... the things you've changed.

I was inspired to do this entry based on an article I'd read in the newspaper, oh, a year ago. You know how some old scrap of forgotten info just suddenly, and randlomly, flutters back into your head? Something like that. It was about a person being given a licence plate that said 'WTF'. You know: WTF-528 or something. The kids giggled, the mom didn't know why. In truth, why not? I'm sure all five of these three-letter acronyms grace licence plates. Before the internet, they meant nothing at all.

The graph shows little: LOL beats all of the others, they're all steadily rising, near each other except for runaway winner LOL, and LOL and OMG are in the middle of current, very new spikes (well, Insights guesses it's a spike, but maybe it's just a massive, permanent upsurge in their fortunes).

Random info from the five:

• OMG is searched most often in the Philippines and Jamaica. The most popular search item is "OMG Yahoo", which is a cheesy fake TMZ. Incidentally, omg.com is just a reroute to omg.yahoo.com.
• WTF is most popular in Canada, and among other things, a popular search item is 'wtf taekwondo', where I presume WTF means 'World Taekwondo Federation'. There is a site at wtf.com, which describes itself as 'an online community forum with a focus on ranting and debating for those who want to bitch and moan about anything on their mind.'
• The top two countries searching for LOL are, oddly, Bosnia and France. Perhaps it has a second meaning in Bosnia? Anyway, unsurprisingly 'lol cats' is the most searched term. Again unsurprisingly, lol.com is a humour site.
• BRB is far and away most popular in Brazil, and the top search items are filled with banking terminology. So BRB is clearly some Brazilian bank - where one hopes the tellers stay at their terminals. But brb.com is the website for Butler Rogers Baskett Architects.
• FTW means 'for the win'. Top googling countries Norway and Singapore might know that, but they might not. Amongst the top ten most searched phrases are: 'what does ftw', 'ftw mean', 'ftw meaning', 'ftw means', 'what is ftw', 'ftw stand for' and 'ftw mean?' Poor confused internet. Lastly, ftw.com is an 'under construction' site for Fort Worth.

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David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg

I have so little to say about this graph. As the cliché goes, it speaks for itself. Nick Clegg's rise in approval is mirrored by a rise in Google searches - makes sense, since he's the 'dark horse' here, coming from behind. But it's easy to understand his appeal now, based on how much rust has collected on the Labour and Conservative brands. Sometimes shiny and new is attractive.

This is a dynamic chart that changes over time. And as I'm writing this several days before it posts, even I don't know what it'll look like when it publishes. Will Clegg still be sky high? Or will it be a temporary spike?

Oh, and how cool is it that the three colours Google Insight chooses for its first three earch items complements the political scene in the UK so well?

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FOX News, CNN, MSNBC

It would appear that in the USA, among the other millions of things that oughtn't to be political but for some reason are... we have news channels. You often hear rhetoric that FOX News has a conservative bent, but you less often hear the claim that MSNBC has a liberal bent. Or that CNN is allegedly somewhere in the middle.

Well, it is certainly true that CNN is way more popular than the other two. But let's check which states Google them the most, and let's compare that to voting trends from the last election.

FOX NEWS:

1. Alabama: McCain 61%, Obama 39%
2. Missouri: McCain 50%, Obama 49%
3. Georgia: McCain 52%, Obama 47%
4. Texas: McCain 55%, Obama 44%
5. Mississippi: McCain 56%, Obama 43%
6. Tennessee: McCain 57%, Obama 42%
7. Ohio: Obama 52%, McCain 47%
8. North Carolina: Obama 50%, McCain 49%
9. South Carolina: McCain 54%, Obama 45%
10. Arkansas: McCain 59%, Obama 39%

MSNBC:

1. Maine: Obama 58%, McCain 40%
2. Rhode Island: Obama 63%, McCain 35%
3. New Mexico: Obama 57%, McCain 42%
4. District of Columbia: Obama 93%, McCain 7%
5. Pennsylvania: Obama 55%, McCain 44%
6. New York: Obama 63%, McCain 36%
7. Maryland: Obama 62%, McCain 37%
8. Alaska: McCain 60%, Obama 38%
9. Ohio: Obama 52%, McCain 47%
10. Missouri: McCain 50%, Obama 49%

CNN:

1. Georgia: McCain 52%, Obama 47%
2. District of Columbia: Obama 93%, McCain 7%
3. New York: Obama 63%, McCain 36%
4. North Carolina: Obama 50%, McCain 49%
5. Maryland: Obama 62%, McCain 37%
6. Texas: McCain 55%, Obama 44%
7. Florida: Obama 51%, McCain 48%
8. Minnesota: Obama 54%, McCain 44%
9. Illinois: Obama 62%, McCain 37%
10. Ohio: Obama 52%, McCain 47% 

Well, those are pretty conclusive results. 8 of the top ten FOX News Googling (not watching) states are 'red states', 8 of the top ten MSNBC Googlers are 'blue states'. Interesting that 8 of the 10 are 'blue' for CNN too - note that #1, Georgia, is red, but note also that CNN is centred in Georgia. CNN Googlers are very much concentrated on the Atlantic Coast, and the vast majority of them are on the top ten of one of the other networks too. Ohio, the newshounds, are on the top ten of all three.

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Google Insights: death spikes

It's a sad reality that people are interested in celebrities dying. So much so, in fact, that the news of a celebrity's death causes a momentary surge of interest in that celebrity. In the case of Michael Jackson, that was enough to more or less swamp the whole internet. You can pick out exactly when these celebrities died by looking at worldwide searches for them from 2004 to present:













All deaths are not equal, however. Obviously Michael Jackson's death is something unprecedented in the history of the internet, but beyond that:



It turns out that, while Michael Jackson dwarfs everyone else so much that events before his death still trump other people's deaths. The aftershock of his death was still greater than the news of Patrick Swayze's death. Corey Haim's is too new to compare, but Heath Ledger's was a pretty high spike. George Carlin's was surprisingly low. Google Insights wouldn't let me compare Farrah Fawcett to other people, for some reason...

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Google Insights: burger joints

Cheap and easy this time... hamburger restaurants around the world. No surprise McDonald's kicks the competition... odd that their searches are seasonal, though. I can't really guess why. Anyway, McDonald's seems to have a connection with the English language, since the top five is Australia, the USA, Singapore, New Zealand and Canada. Burger King is a bit more multilingual: the USA, Puerto Rico, Turkey, Germany and New Zealand. Similar names show up for Wendy's: the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Panama.

Don't the Kiwis love their hamburgers?

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Google Insights: blue states and red states

Someone somewhere, about a decade or so ago, got the idea to use the colours blue for the Democratic Party and red for the Republican Party (the opposite of conventional wisdom). Someone else got the idea, during election coverage, to use this colour scheme to colour states on maps. Someone else got the idea to refer to the states coloured red as 'red states' and those coloured blue as... well, perhaps you've guessed. As a result, Massachusetts (senatorial elections notwithstanding) is a so-called 'blue state' and Alabama a so-called 'red state'.

So how red and blue are they really? Well, I searched for those terms: 'blue state' and 'red state' to see who was Googling them. Confusion reigns:

The two maps aren't really all that different from each other (which actually makes sense). Maine and Massachusetts Google 'red states' the most, which could be interpreted as espionage, whereas West Virginia and DC Google 'blue states' most. In this case, it's a bit more curious: West Virginia (#3 for 'red states' as well) seems to take its status as a transitional state seriously, Googling both sides. DC, on the other hand, is as blue as they come - even if it's not a state per se.

Here's the trends over time. Notice, logically, how similar the two are. When people are Googling one, they're Googling the other.

Google Insights: social networking sites

Something I wrote last week made me want to consider this topic. Social networking sites are meant to be one of those defining factors of what they were recently calling "Web 2.0" - the more dynamic, interactive, user-controlled web that now exists. By and large I have little interest in social networking sites, but the graph is interesting. Well, to a point:



The ubiquity of Facebook obviously renders this graph a bit useless. I'm surprised, though, that Facebook keeps rising. I would have figured by now that whoever was going to use it already would have, and that many people would have gotten bored of it by now: in short, that it would have begin to resemble that wonderful bow-shaped rise-and-fall that we see for Myspace.

So what's interesting, then, is how regional these sites are. The real action is in the 'regional interest' lists. Myspace, it turns out, is most popular in Puerto Rico, the USA, Australia, Malaysia and the UK - anglophone countries or countries influenced by anglophone countries. Oddly enough, Facebook's global reach has succeeded to the point where its hometown of the USA isn't even in the top ten anymore and only one English-speaking country, the UK, makes the top ten at all. Tunisia, bizarrely, is at #1, followed by Turkey, Italy, Croatia and Venezuela: a motley crew of countries if I've ever seen one.

Google's Orkut is meant to be 'popular in Brazil and India', but Brazil's neighbout Paraguay actually tops the list, with Brazil, India, Pakistan and Haiti rounding out the list. Facebook appears to be all but unheard of in Brazil, though Twitter is popular enough there to give Brazil its #1 ranking, ahead of an otherwise anglophonic top five: Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada. Hi5, about which I know nothing, seems to be a Spanish-speaking phenomenon, with eight of the top ten being hispanophonic countries. Spain is not one of them, though its neighbout Portugal, unique in Europe, seems to enjoy hi5. The hi5 top5 is Peru, Portugal, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Costa Rica.