Facebook Tops 2012 Wikipedia Queries

Fotog/Tetra Images, via Corbis

How do you learn about another culture? Maybe by looking at its Wikipedia searches. On Friday, a Swedish software engineer published a list of Wikipedia's most-searched articles of 2012, sorted by language. 

Facebook tops the English-language site's list of things we care about, with One Direction, 50 Shades of Grey, and The Avengers also showing up in our top 10. Over on the Spanish site, people learned about the Mayan culture, while in Iran, searchers seem curious about homosexuality, sex, and female genitals, which all showed up on the Persian site's top 10. 

Sex made another appearance on Japan's list, where the top search was for a porn actress. The most inexplicable international No. 1? German-language speakers really care about cul-de-sacs.

Read it at The Washington Post

December 29, 2012 8:52 AM