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CNN LIVE SATURDAY
Interview With Aaron Schatz
Aired April 26, 2003 - 17:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: As far as most Web surfers in the U.S. are concerned, Iraq and the war -- well, they are things of the past. They've moved on to other topics. Lycos.com columnist Aaron Schatz joins us from Boston to discuss what is up, what's down, what's in, what is out on the Web. Aaron, thanks for being with us.
AARON SCHATZ, LYCOS.COM COLUMNIST: Good afternoon, Anderson.
COOPER: What are the top 10 stories? Let's start with the bottom -- the bottom 10 that people are surfing right now on the Web.
SCHATZ: Over the last 72 hours a lot of searches for the Dixie Chicks, I mean you can imagine because of the cover of "Entertainment Weekly." Then a couple of the things that always get searched, pop culture, Britney Spears and Pam Anderson; then leftover searches about the war; the NFL draft, very big for today, obviously that is getting a lot of searches; Dragonball, a Japanese cartoon that's always popular on our list; tattoos; KaZaA things people always search for. But, up at number on, you'll notice the new story that's really replaced the war as the thing that people are going to the Internet for information on, and that's SARS.
COOPER: The -- just number three on the list, KaZaA, that is what, a music engine?
SCHATZ: Yes, that's the newer version of Napster, not a version of Napster, but what's replaced Napster is how people trade music on the Internet and it's more popular than Napster ever was, and it gets more searches and the federal government has not found a way to sue it or shut it down yet.
COOPER: When did SARS rocket to the top of the list?
SCHATZ: About this week, the war's been up there until last week. The IRS and taxes took over the number one spot last week, as you can imagine, and then SARS took over number one, it's getting a lot of searches. We're a North American search engines, as you can imagine it's getting more searches from Canada than a lot of the other subjects that we have on Lycos.
COOPER: Yes, I understand really, with the situation in Toronto there. In terms of war stories, you said it's no longer -- I mean we -- the -- you know, it is still in the top ten, but no longer where it was. In the subcategory of war stories, what are some of the war topics that people are looking up the most?
SCHATZ: Well, at one point Al Jazeera was the number one topic on our search engine...
COOPER: Really, Al Jazeera?
SCHATZ: Higher even than the war. A lot of that had to do with the prisoner of war videotape. Because it was not shown on most American networks, people went to the Internet to find it and the place they knew they could find it was Al Jazeera. And then after that people went to look for the Al Jazeera English language Web site. You know, for a long time if you wanted to know what people thought about us in other countries you'd have to go to your out-of-town newsstand and the newspapers were a couple days old.
Now you can find out what people think about things all over the world, basically instantaneously thanks to the Internet. You can read Lemon, you can read the "Guardian," you can read Al Jazeera, or the "Jerusalem Post." So, during this war people really hit the Internet to find out what people all around the world were saying about what was going on in Iraq.
COOPER: Now, I heard, I think it was from you, that Al Jazeera was actually hit or typed in more than sex was.
SCHATZ: Yes, yes.
COOPER: I find that very difficult to believe.
SCHATZ: No it's absolutely true. There was one week where Al Jazeera and all of its various misspellings did receive more searches than s-e-x, those three little letters that get searched every week.
COOPER: What about Mohammad Sahaf, is he a popular Web -- Web search?
SCHATZ: He's dropped off a little bit in the last week, but at one point he was up to number seven on our weekly top 50...
COOPER: He beat Britney Spears? Mohammad Sahaf?
SCHATZ: Yes, Mohammad Saeed Al-Sahaf, more popular than Britney Spears, maybe not with the young boys, but certainly with a lot of people wanted to go to that Web site, WelovetheIraqiinformationminister.com. He's gone down a bit; right now the big kitschy search for the war is for the playing cards. We're getting a ton of searches for those Iraqi leader player cards, the most wanted cards and I'm sure if anyone checks their e-mail they have received 10 to 15 spam messages a day from people who claim they have to official cards and can sell them to at whatever price their naming.
COOPER: Now, you say the war has entered sort of the pop culture phase. What do you mean about that?
SCHATZ: Well, for the first couple of weeks, people hit war for information about a lot of the fighting, not only maps of Iraq, but pictures from the war and information about the different weaponry we were using. Now that the war is over, people have sort of a lighter side stories, like Al-Sahaf, like the playing cards, or like a newer version of the all-your-base-are-belong-to-us Internet fad from two years ago, called all-your-Baghdad-are-belongs-to-us that contains pictures from the war instead of from a video game.
COOPER: Aaron Schatz, I appreciate you joining us. I think you've given the Al Jazeera Web site a new slogan. Al Jazeera, more people like us than sex.
SCHATZ: Well, only for one week. It takes a lot more to be more popular than sex all the time.
COOPER: That it does. Aaron Schatz, appreciate you joining us.
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