Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Paris Hilton Has Sex With Britney Spears While Levitating Outside The White House After Bigfoot Found Dead Following Roswell Alien Confession

News.com.au claims it has an extraordinary 250,00 or so unique daily visitors, which is more than the Drudge Report (who presents every page load as a 'visit'). The vast majority of news.com.au readers are Australians, and Australians living overseas, so it's fascinating to see what stories were the most popular of the year.

Sex and violence rules. New prime minister Kevin Rudd was obviously far more interesting to readers than boring old John Howard. The Iraq War capture no headlines in the Top 100, but American gun massacres and natural disasters and mass death events were as popular as any other year.

A thorough perusal of the list shows that while Sex Still Sells, merely the words "found dead" in a headline is worth a big audience, even better if it's a celebrity that's been "found dead", like Anna Nicole Smith.

Australians clearly love the celebrity pap, but they like their weird stories as well, with headlines about Bigfoot and Roswell aliens powering into the Top 20.

Here's the Top Ten most visited News.com.au stories of the year :

10. Spoiler : how Harry Potter ends

9. Treeman has experts baffled

8. Chihuahua puppy born with loveheart pattern in fur

7. Singing salesman makes Cowell’s jaw drop

6. Roswell aliens theory revived by deathbed confession

5. Man levitates outside the Whitehouse

4. Britney attempted rehab suicide

3. 15-year-old girl jailed with 20 men

2. Federal Election “Vote-a-matic”

1.Paris Hilton loses inheritance


My personal favourites for just the headlines alone :

Man murdered parents with axe for laughing at cat’s death

Sex with robots not far away

Men to be spanked in new town

Crocodile vet speaks about having arm bitten off