Katrina Kaif is Yahoo's 'Newsmaker of 2010'

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Yahoo! India announced today its 2010 Year in Review report, which showed Bollywood actor Katrina Kaif as the ‘Newsmaker of the Year’.

The annual Yahoo! look back identifies the top trends of the year from millions of consumer searches and the top stories and topics of the year from the Yahoo! Network, said a press release.

This year, online activity on Yahoo! India was dominated by the public’s transfixion with a fair share of controversies and comebacks, triumphs and disasters, clashes of personalities and clashes of interests, spread over the arenas of news, politics, current affairs, cricket, finance, entertainment in general and movies in particular.

There are many factors, both professional and personal, that made Katrina Kaif the ‘Newsmaker of the Year’, said Yahoo. Her critically acclaimed performance in the film Rajneeti, existing cheek by jowl with a mystery stomach ailment that had the nation on tenterhooks, her breakup with long time beau Salman Khan and also her more recent, still ‘alleged’ romance with the latest Kapoor scion Ranbir, all added to her news value.

Expectedly, on the popularity charts, Sachin Tendulkar is the top cricket icon on the Yahoo! India network. Like each of his previous 20 years in the game, Sachin made national news by breaking records, it said. And also cricket continued to establish itself as the national preoccupation of choice for Indians, as was visible from the discussions they had on the developments around the third season of the Indian Premier League (IPL3), said Yahoo.

Controversies ranged from Shashi Tharoor losing his job over an IPL-related spat to Lalit Modi being questioned by various investigative agencies and the abrupt axing of two high profile teams from Rajasthan and Punjab. Interestingly, he married Sunanda Pushkar, whose name also surfaced in the controversy.

Search trends across Yahoo! highlighted scams and scandals, which surfaced with distressing regularity across the realms of politics, governance and finance. From India’s best ever international sporting moment at the Commonwealth Games, to the criminal investigations that followed, there was no dearth of scams, which is now led by the 2G spectrum episode.

Also a sex scandal complete with video rocked the hitherto unsullied reputation of Swami Nithyananda and came as a rude shock to the hundreds of thousands of devoted followers of the ‘godman’.

“No news may be good news for merchants of clichés, but for a journalist, the reverse is true – news is good, it is what keeps editorial adrenalin pumping,” said Prem Panicker, managing editor, Yahoo! India.

This year, online activity among Yahoo! US and APAC was dominated by pop culture’s leading ladies, gadgets starting with “I,” and a newfound fascination with soccer, said the press release.

On a lighter note, soccer turned out to be a burning topic for fans and newbie alike. Search trends showed excitement around the players and teams throughout the World Cup tournament.

While these issues above catch user’s attention, still, 2010 was an unstable and tragic year. Among the APAC region, besides the Apple fad and World cup which is common with global trends, frequent natural disasters such as typhoon, earthquakes and tsunami were part of the most popular search terms for 2010.

Also seen this year is the APAC user’s love for celebrity gossip as evidenced by the number of people who went on Yahoo! to find out the latest reports on local stars, said the report.