The year’s top searches, videos, memes, long reads…
• The top news story of 2012, according to Google: Hurricane Sandy. Kate Middleton’s topless pics came in at No. 2, beating the Olympics. The Trayvon Martin shooting was No. 9. (According to the AP’s poll of newsroom leaders, the top news story was the massacre in Newtown.)
• The top search term was “Whitney Houston.” The singer died in February.
• The top news sources searched were NBC, Nate Silver’s Five Thirty Eight blog and Chi, the Italian magazine that published the pictures of Kate Middleton topless.
• Here’s a look back at 2011’s top searches: Hurricane Irene beat out Casey Anthony on Google, but not on Bing.
YouTube
• Its most popular videos. Guess what’s No. 1.
• The U.S. presidential election was the most-discussed event on the social network this year, followed by the Super Bowl and Whitney Houston’s death.
• The top meme on the service wasn’t Big Bird (No.9) or word-of-the-year candidate YOLO — it was TBH (to be honest). Editors, design your 2013 coverage accordingly.
• The read-it-later service says its most popular saved articles were “Obama’s Way” by Michael Lewis, “The ‘Busy’ Trap” by Tim Kreider and “How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking” by Mat Honan. (Honan has three articles on Pocket’s Top 10.)
Storify
• Storify’s year in review is available as…a Storify! We’ll compile reactions to it for a meta year-in-review-in-review if Friday is slow enough.
