The Most Popular Journal

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 of life. You could probably guess the most popular video site on the net, but who else reigns in the realm of video?

A recent ComScore survey let us know which sites proved to be the most popular throughout March 2009.

Hulu – 380,102 videos watched

A mere eighteen months old, Hulu is a relative newcomer with its bevy of ad-supported movies and TV shows. Already a joint venture between NBC Universal and the News Corporation, a recent partnership with ABC Enterprises means the site is supported by three of the four major broadcast networks.

Fox Interactive Media – 437,098 videos watched

As the News Corporation’s digital arm, Fox Interactive Media is not only responsible for delivering the popular broadcast network’s shows to the internet; it also oversees sites like IGN and, of course, MySpace. Now, if only Fox would stop cancelling my favorite shows…

YouTube (and other Google properties) – 5,919,530 videos watched

Yeah, that’s right—five million videos. You’re not surprised, are you? The behemoth of video sharing had a bit of a head start; YouTube went live in February 2005 and was purchased by Google, Inc. less than two years later. Add to this the fact that, unlike Hulu or Fox, YouTube is a platform for user-generated (and, in most cases, short) videos and you can see why YouTube holds over 40% of the market share of videos watched in March.

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 look at that list of generic names for carbonated soft drinks and it should be pretty obvious; Coke is America’s most popular soft drink.

Coca-Cola was created in 1885 by Georgian druggist John Pemberton and was originally known as Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. You’ve probably heard that the original formula used cocaine, but may not be aware that it was also alcoholic. Of course, that had to change when Atlanta outlawed booze the next year and the resulting drink, which also contained caffeine from Kola nuts, became known as Coca-Cola. It wasn’t until 1903 that the Coca-Cola Company stopped using cocaine in the popular soft drink.

According to “Beverage Digest,” 17.2% of soda consumed in 2007 was Coke Classic. Pepsi Cola held second place with 10.7% and Diet Coke came in third with 10%.

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 [...]