The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, killing 11 workers before being consumed by fire and sinking beneath the waves. Nearly three months later, more than
200 million gallons of oil had spilled, making it
the largest of its kind.
#2 on Twitter - News
#2 on Twitter - Total
#3 on Yahoo - Total
#5 on AOL - News
#10 on Google - News
The
7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti on Tuesday, Jan. 12, at a little after 2:45 p.m., left upwards of 230,000 people killed, injured 300,000, and rendered 1 million Haitian residents homeless. Reconstruction efforts continue to this day and will be ongoing for quite some time as the world helps Haiti rebuild.
#2: Twitter - News
#4: Twitter - Total
#1: Google - News
#3: AOL - News
#4: Google - News*
*The 4th spot on Google News was "earthquake." We attributed this to Haiti, as the earthquake in Pakistan did not register on the other trends lists.
Since its launch on April 3, Apple's sold more than 8 million copies of its
revolutionary iPad and is already
predicting an increase of 127 percent in 2011.
#2: Google - Trends
#1: Google - Shopping
#1 Twitter - Tech/Shopping
#1 Yahoo - Tech
#1 AOL - Shopping
#3 Yahoo - Trends
#6 Twitter - Total
2010 will forever be remembered as the year Miley Cyrus truly conquered her adolescence. Internet users searched for evidence of the young pop singer
giving a lap dance to a film producer and
smoking salvia out of a bong, all as she starred in
The Last Song, a film that grossed nearly $90 million worldwide.
#1 Yahoo - People
#3 Yahoo - Total
#7 Google - People
After a tumultuous 2009, 2010 was supposed to be a
comeback year for the golfer Tiger Woods. But fate intervened, as Woods went a full season without finishing on top of the leaderboard—the first time since he turned pro in 1996.
#1 AOL - People
#3 Bing - Total
#3 Bing - People
The highly anticipated follow-up to Apple's 3GS, the
iPhone 4 was announced June 7—nearly two months after the gadget blog Gizmodo got its hands on a copy and
published a full review. Over 14 million phones had been sold by year's end.
#1 Yahoo - Trends
#2 AOL Shopping
#6 Yahoo - Total
#4 Twitter - Tech/Shopping
#6 Google - News
#2 Google - Shopping
#2 Yahoo - Tech
In spring 2010, Google released Froyo, an updated SDK for developers of
Google's Android operating system. This encouraged wide-scale adoption, giving Apple its first true challenger on the mobile smartphone market.
#2 Twitter - Tech/Shopping
#7 Twitter - Total
2010 was a busy year for
Kim Kardashian. The reality star released multiple clothing lines, dated a football player, and in July, saw a faux version of her likeness appear in Times Square's Madame Tussauds wax museum.
#1 Bing - Total
#1 Bing - People
#4 Google - People
#2 Yahoo - People
#2 Yahoo - Total
#7 AOL - People
In 2010, Lady Gaga ruled the pop charts, as she toured throughout the country on "The Monster Ball Tour" and accepted an award for Video of the Year at the 2010 MTV VMAs. She also raised awareness for lupus, after telling
CNN's Larry King her results for the disease were "borderline positive." Her album
The Fame Monster topped the charts, selling nearly 6 million copies worldwide.
#5 Google - News
#3 Twitter - People
#3 Yahoo - People
#6 Google - People
#5 Yahoo - Total
#4 Bing - Total
#3 AOL - People
#4 Bing - People
Bedbugs continued their march across America in 2010, conquering cities from New York to Los Angeles—as exterminators fought to control the pests, largely without success.
#1 AOL - Health
#7 Yahoo - Trends
As it surpassed 500 million users, Facebook was on everybody's mind this summer, especially following the release of
The Social Network, a film that chronicled the controversial early days of the nearly seven-year-old website.
#10 Google - Trends
#6 Yahoo - Trends
The actress, who won an Oscar in 2010 for
The Blind Side, had a rollercoaster year, ultimately
divorcing husband Jesse James following waves of highly publicized reports of his infidelity. On the flip side, she donated $1 million to relief efforts in Haiti and recorded a PSA supporting clean-up efforts following
BP's oil spill in the Gulf.
#2 Bing - Total
#4 AOL - People
#2 Bing - People
In August, Katy Perry released
Teenage Dream, an album primarily serving as the vehicle for her hit "California Gurls," which ultimately hit No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100. Additionally, in the fall,
Perry married the comedian Russell Brand.
#2 Google - People
#7 Google - Trends
#8 Yahoo - People
The
2010 World Cup once again reminded Americans that soccer, er, football, was a thing! Hosted in South Africa, the soccer contest also introduced the world to the country's stadium horn of choice: the vuvuzela. Its low "groan-y" hum still resonates in sports bars around the world.
#2 Yahoo - Total
#1 Yahoo - Sports
#6 AOL - Trends
#5 Twitter - Total
#4 AOL - Trends
Thirty-three Chilean miners were trapped 2,300 feet underground for 69 days when a mine collapsed in August. As the world watched on live television over nearly 20 hours, each miner was rescued in a rescue capsule named the Fenix 2.
#3 Google - Trends
#5 Twitter - News
#7 AOL - News
Justin Bieber's debut studio album,
My World 2.0, was released in March, and the 16-year-old hasn't rested since then. His popularity
grew so much that an event at a Long Island mall had to be canceled after thousands of fans arrived just to see him and police
threatened to arrest him and his fans. But although some credit the Internet with helping Bieber's success, it's also home to harsh criticism, with sites like 4Chan and Reddit launching campaigns aimed at spreading false rumors that he has syphilis and users voting to
send him to North Korea on his latest tour.
#1 Google - People
#3 Google - Trends
#1 Twitter - People
#2 AOL - People
#8 Twitter - Total
#5 Yahoo - People
#8 Yahoo - Total
#7 Bing - People
#9 Bing - Total
Megan Fox's overexposure in 2009 led to
several men's websites to boycott her, and
Fox herself agreeing. Maybe that's why so many people continued to be curious about her, or maybe it was her
wedding to actor Brian Austin Green in June.
#4 Yahoo - People
#9 Google - People
#7 Yahoo - Total
From the
massive health care reform bill passed in March to the extension of the
Bush-era tax cuts in December, the public's fascination with President Barack Obama continued into 2010.
#5 Bing - Total
#5 Bing - People
By February, Chatroulette, the social networking site, had about
35,000 people on it at any given time. The site's easy-to-use format and random pairing helped its popularity, sure, but the nonstop news coverage of the latest social phenomenon also helped, and spoofs popping up everywhere from
The Daily Show to
South Park.
#1 Google - Trends
#2 AOL - Trends
#3 Reddit - Total
The Tea Party first burst into the scene in January 2009, but the movement's first election victory came in January 2010 when
Republican Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's longtime Senate seat—and Brown's victory was credited to the Tea Party. By the time the midterm election campaign season rolled around in the summer of 2010,
the Tea Party had dominated the media coverage.
#8 Yahoo - Trends
#5 AOL - News
