Yahoo has recently released its 10 most-searched terms, where we can find celebrities, U.S. Politics and TV shows. The pop star Britney Spears took the first spot of Yahoo's list of top 10 overall searches, followed by WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and Barack Obama, president-elect of the United States. On the fourth place came singer Miley Cyrus, the star of the “Hannah Montanta” films. The fifth place was perfect for the online role-playing game RuneScape, while the sixth place was grabbed by Jessica Alba, who celebrated her wedding this year and who gave birth to a child too. Not surprisingly, the Japanese manga series, Naruto, came in seventh. The cartoons are shown on Cartoon Network and, furthermore, they represent a video game. Lindsay Lohan, the bad girl from Hollywood, came in eighth, while Angelina Jolie got a disappointing ninth place. Last but not least, American Idol ended the top 10 Yahoo searches this year.

In addition, Yahoo also identified several major search themes for 2008, including the economy, the Olympics and news stories. The most popular economy-related search was IRS stimulus checks, followed by oil and gold prices. As for the Olympics, people “searched” the swimmer Michael Phelps, who recently won 8 gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. Hurricanes topped the list of most popular news stories, Yahoo said. As for the president-elect, Obama also topped Google's 2008 ranking. Marissa Mayer, vice president of search product and user experience at Google, told the media that Obama beat Facebook, iPhone, AT&T and Youtube as the fastest rising search term. All in all, it's easy to see that most of the top places were occupied by pop culture and entertainment stars, which once again shows that people tend to watch these rather than read a book.