On February 1st, 2009, Boston’s new House of Blues opened its doors for its first public event. After just one year, that club has become the world’s most popular music venue.
Live Nation, owners of the House of Blues franchise since 2006, opened the new club in the former location of Avalon, one of Boston’s more popular nightclubs. Concert promoter Don Law hoped to book as many as 300 shows in 2009 and, while he fell short of the mark by some 50 shows, the results are impressive nonetheless—no club in the world sold as many tickets that year as the House of Blues in Boston.
The most popular club in the world may have gotten some of its help from the location, next to Fenway Park, and the nostalgia of former patrons of Avalon. It’s also one of the few midsized venues in the city—most of the other venues in Boston can only host a smaller or much larger crowd.
The New Orleans Saints may have won the game in 2010, but the real Super Bowl XLIV winner was the same as the year before. No, I’m not talking about the Indianapolis Colts—I’m talking about Doritos. Their 4th quarter spot is 2010’s most popular Super Bowl ad.
The ad, featuring a Doritos-clad samurai reclaiming a purloined bag of chips, was part of this year’s “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign of consumer-generated videos. One of six finalists, “Snack Attack Samurai” by CBer was voted into the Top 3 by Doritos fans across America. That alone guaranteed its placement during the Super Bowl. The 116.5 million viewers who, according to The NielsenCompany, tuned in to see the ad made it not only the most popular Super Bowl ad ever but the most popular television program in history—beating the 1983 airing of the M*A*S*H series finale.
This year, the second place went to Audi’s “Green Police” ad with 115.6 million viewers and third went to an ad for Electronic Arts’ “Dante’s Inferno” with 115 million.
Since 1996, Emily has been the most popular girl’s name in the US. In fact, the Social Security Administration, the government organization that tallies babies’ names every year, named its own spokesbaby Emily. It looks like Emily’s going to have to resign now, though, as Emma has become the most popular girl’s name in the US.
Emma wasn’t the only name to outperform Emily in 2008. Isabella ranked second place, knocking Emily down to a humble third place. Following Emily, from most to least popular, were Madison, Ava, Olivia, Sophia, Abigail, Elizabeth and Chloe.
The SSA has also started ranking names by their year-to-year changes in popularity. The rising star among girl’s names this year was Khloe, which rose from 665 in 2007 to 196 in 2008. Miley, in only its sophomore year on the list, rose from 279 to 127.
The most populous city in the US is also the most popular city for college graduates looking to put their degrees to work. New York City topped a list of cities, compiled by job hunting sites CareerCast.com and Going Global, ranked by their popularity as destinations for graduates looking for entry level employment opportunities.
The Big Apple was a top choice on the lists of 83% of those surveyed. Washington, DC, which ranked second, was chosen by only 65% of the surveyed students. Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco rounded out the top five cities listed by these first time job hunters.
The two sites also found that the United Kingdom is the most popular country for both American students and foreign-born students at US colleges when asked where they’d like to work after graduation. Like the foreign-born students, US students gave the United States third place—despite a drop in the number of US students looking to move abroad after graduation.
In the early days of popular internet culture, your website was on the bleeding edge if it had something as cool as an animated Quake logo. As broadband internet service became de rigueur, though, delivering video content became increasingly feasible. Nowadays, with amateur videos far outnumbering their professional counterparts, internet video is just a fact [...]
Whether you call it pop, soda, coke or soda pop, if you’re a US citizen it’s likely that you drink soda on a fairly regular basis. In 2007, it was estimated that, on average, Americans drink three quarts of soda per week. So what is it that we’re drinking so much? Well, just take another [...]
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has been a little busy since earning second place in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries. He’s worked as a political commentator and host for both Fox and ABC, spoken at the 2008 Republican National Convention and published his seventh book. He may even be the most popular Republican in the [...]
Ashton Kutcher Actor and Hollywood prankster Ashton Kutcher became the most popular dude on Twitter in a recent competition with CNN to see which Twitter account would receive their millionth follower first. The contest may have seemed like an easy win for CNN when they purchased @cnnbrk, an account set up to tweet CNN’s breaking news and, [...]
Far be it from me to turn the wheels of propaganda, but this wouldn’t be The Most Popular Journal if we ignored a story like this. After a poll of 10,000 people in twenty-two Ibero-American countries, President Barack Obama has been declared the most popular leader in the Americas. The poll shows a 70% approval rating [...]
Apple’s infamous App Store recently hit the 25,000 app milestone, but how many of those are worth downloading? Changes to the store since its debut in July of 2008 have addressed this issue, but users still complain about paying for dud apps that are quickly removed to save space. Luckily, third party market researcher ComScore [...]
If email seems a little clunky and outdated to you, there’s a good reason for that—it actually predates the internet. Originating out of MIT in the 1960s, email addresses are now as common as telephones. Someone has to provide those email addresses, though, and they’re usually doing it free of charge. The two most popular email [...]
It’s no wonder the Musée du Louvre is the most popular museum in the world. The historic Parisian fortress became the first museum accessible by even the lowest caste when the royal collection of King Louis XVI was opened to the public one year after his imprisonment during the French Revolution. Under the auspices of [...]
I’m sure this won’t shock or amaze you, but Apple pretty much has the MP3 player market cornered with the omnipresent iPod. Since you already know that, I’ll just get it out of the way first. You might want to skip past the first few entries on our list if you’d like to know about [...]
A recent poll has allowed ordinary Americans to vote on their own favorite actors and actresses. The poll was conducted jointly between Parade magazine and Entertainment Tonight. Participants were allowed to vote on previous Academy Awards winners in various Oscar-like categories. Tom Hanks was voted Best Actor in the poll, proving that the two-time Oscar winner [...]
Super Bowl is about more than football, snacks and camaraderie—it’s also about watching the most extravagant ads of the year. The most popular Super Bowl ads this year, however, weren’t the most expensive to make. Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” contest allowed aspiring filmmakers and amateur marketers to submit their own ads to, well, crash the [...]
One of the most important questions facing NBA fans today is “Whose jersey is the most popular?” Last year, the answer would have been Kevin Garnett’s No. 5 Boston Celtics jersey. This year the answer is the jersey worn by none other than the Los Angeles Lakers’ 11-time All-Star—Kobe Bryant. Bryant’s No. 24 jersey dominated sales [...]
This may come as a surprise for you but, back in the old days, people used to read books. They were made out of paper and cardboard or something. Sometimes they had pictures, but people would make fun of you for reading those. More often they were just words on paper. Of course, in the old [...]
Condoms are one of the oldest of prophylactics with usage (debatably) dating back to ancient civilizations. Prior to the fifteenth century, glans condoms, which covered only the head of the penis, were used in Asia. They were usually made of oiled silk or lamb intestines. That’s right—lamb intestines. History is disgusting. Of course, the oldest method of [...]
The Joker Halloween is just around the corner and costume shop owners couldn’t be happier as this year’s blockbusters drive costume sales. So what are this year’s most popular Halloween costumes?
“Sexy” Rainbow Brite For men, the most popular costume is from the hit movie Dark Knight—but it isn’t Batman. Instead, the late Heath Ledger’s ghoulish portrayal of [...]
The most populous city in the US is also the most popular city for college graduates looking to put their degrees to work. New York City topped a list of cities, compiled by job hunting sites 