Paris Hilton Is Top Twitter Search Celebrity

I’m filing this one under “I don’t get it” — according to new Hitwise data, Paris Hilton is the most-searched celebrity on Twitter.

Do that many people really want to find Paris Hilton? And follow her?

The data covers searches done at search.twitter.com during the week that ended on March 21, 2009.

Searches for the Twilight vampire series held down the No. 1 spot, no doubt due to the release of the DVD during the week these stats represent. A conservative political hashtag, “redco,” was No. 2, and “parkersburg” — the West Virginia city, perhaps? — was third. And then there’s Paris Hilton at No. 4, even beating out Oprah; she’s the queen of Twitter search.

College basketball was well represented, with terms such as “ncaa,” “hoyas,” “michigan,” “maryland,” and “acc” all in the top 25. The NCAA basketball tournament began the week of Hitwise’s data collection.

Overall, it looks like a very strange list to me. But it may speak to the variety of ways people use Twitter. I’m surprised to see relatively few news-related terms on the list, but that’s because I rely on Twitter as a primary source of business and local information during the day. The Hitwise data suggests there are a lot of people who use Twitter as a big celebrity gossip chamber, too.