Adult HIV Scare Stirs Lycos Top 50 Interest

The Lycos Top 50 user searches for the week ending May 1 turned up an entry from the adult entertainment world: actress Lara Roxx, at number 42, mostly thanks to information-seeking and curiosity due to the HIV crisis gripping adult entertainment since mid-April, when Roxx was determined to have contracted HIV from actor Darren James.

Terra Lycos said Roxx's number 42 amounted to a 142 percent increase in search inquiries for the adult actress, with James showing a 46 percent increase over the previous week.

On the other hand, the number one Lycos search for the week ending May 1 was Paris Hilton, the heiress whose reputed sex video with a former boyfriend - who has since made hash over attempts to profit from the video and litigation the video provoked - made her the number one search, with the Lycos survey listing her as "video star".

American Idol helped co-judge and country music star Clay Aiken place number two on the week's survey. The top ten were rounded out, in descending order, by singer Britney Spears, peer-to-peer file-swapping service KaZaA, Weight Watchers, the Atkins Diet, Pamela Anderson ("Web classic," said the survey listing), anime hit Dragonball, World Wrestling Entertainment (for the ladies), and the South Beach Diet.

The show and cast of Friends, the NBC situation comedy about to air its farewell episode, had a large jump in Lycos search queries, with Jennifer Aniston leading as the most-searched among the popular cast, nine times more than the second most popular cast member, Courtney Cox Arquette.

But the single largest search query jump was experienced by twin actresses Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Together, the twins came in at number 35 - up from number 50 the week before. The twins who became famous on the television sitcom Full House and became rich producing their own direct-to-video features after the sitcom's run ended picked up the big jump thanks to their new feature film, New York Minute. Except that the film itself didn't draw search queries at the level as the girls themselves, the Olsen sisters getting 14 times the search queries the film gets, Terra Lycos said.