Socialite

On a pound-for-pound basis, the average World of Warcraft junkie undoubtedly represents a much less destructive social force than the average meth head. But it’s not extreme anecdotes that make the specter of Internet addiction so threatening; it’s the fact that Internet overuse has the potential to scale in a way that few other addictions do. Even if Steve Jobs designed a really cool-looking syringe and started distributing free heroin on street corners, not everyone would try it. But who among us doesn’t already check his email more often than necessary? As the Internet weaves itself more and more tightly into our lives, only the Amish are completely safe.

Search-generated content has been growing on the Internet, linked to the success of companies like Associated Content, which Yahoo recently bought, and Demand Media, which has used freelance writers to create an online library of more than a million instructional articles.

But the use of search data has been limited more to the realm of “how to” topics like “How do I teach my dog sign language?” than questions about the news of the day like “Where does Elena Kagan stand on corporate campaign donations?”

Yahoo software continuously tracks common words, phrases and topics that are popular among users across its vast online network. To help create content for the blog, called The Upshot, a team of people will analyze those patterns and pass along their findings to Yahoo’s news staff of two editors and six bloggers.

The news staff will then use that search data to create articles that — if the process works as intended — will allow them to focus more precisely on readers.

“When you think about the entertainment trends of the past 10 years,” Szego reasons, “they have all been speculative in nature: the rise of online, multi-player, role-playing games, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Stephenie Meyer. And it’s not just about those books. I sell far more copies of the latest Cory Doctorow than I do the latest Stephenie Meyer.”