Facebook Tops List Of Most Viewed Wikipedia Articles In 2012

By Khurram Aziz email: k.aziz@mobilenapps.com | Dec 29, 2012 03:40 PM EST

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It seems in 2012 we turned to Wikipedia to learn more about Facebook. The Internet encyclopedia has revealed its top 10 list of most views articles this year, with the entry for the social network proving most popular among English speakers.

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Swedish software engineer Johan Gunnarsson compiled the data which shows the 2012 top 10 lists for all of the Web site's 35 languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, and Thai.

Hua Shan - a Chinese mountain featuring "the world's deadliest hiking trail" - topped the Dutch list, for example, while cul-de-sacs were the German site's most clicked entry.

After Facebook, "Wiki" and "Deaths in 2012" took the number two and three spots in the English version's top 10 list, repectively. However, elsewhere on the list, English speakers seemed most concerned with the pop-cultural trends of the year.

The boy band One Direction, the adult novel phenomenon Fifty Shades of Gray, and the third installment in the Batman film franchise featuring Christian Bales - the Dark Knight Rises - were also in the top 10 most viewed English articles list of 2012.

Jay Walsh, a spokesperson for Wikipedia, told All Things Digital that there are two probable explanations for Facebook's popularity on Wikipedia, along with articles for Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other top Web properties.

It could be that users are typing Facebook into an integrated search engine in their browsers intending to go to the site and end up on Wikipedia by mistake. However, there could be another reason.

"It's quite possible that these numbers confirm general, high-level interest and curiosity about top web properties - their history, policies, background, etc.," Walsh said.

Here is the full list of the most popular Wikipedia pages in English in 2012:

1.       Facebook  - 32,647,942 views

2.       Wiki - 29,613,759 views

3.       Deaths in 2012 - 25,418,587 views

4.       One Direction - 22,351,637 views

5.       The Avengers (2012 film) - 22,268,644 views

6.       Fifty Shades of Grey - 21,779,423 views

7.       2012 phenomenon - 20,619, 920 views

8.       The Dark Knight Rises - 18,882,885 views

9.       Google - 18,508,719 views

10.   The Hunger Games - 18,431, 626 views

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