We had a couple of searches to our blog asking about popular fandoms.  That’s kind of subjective and hard to measure but I’ll try to list them again.

Year to date, the most popular fandoms on Fan History based on how many times the article about them have been accessed are:

1. Digimon
2. Nartuo
3. Twilight
4. Gundam Wing
5. Harry Potter
6. Supernatural
7. The Fast and the Furious
8. Dragon Ball Z
9. Prince of Tennis
10. Sailor Moon

That list doesn’t necessarily seem accurate.  It probably reflects where Fan History’s articles are better.

A second way that you could measure the most popular fandoms is based on the total of new stories posted to FanFiction.Net.  For yesterday?  The following list was generated:

That seems a bit more accurate for popular fandoms and wow! Yay!   It seems to agree some with the most popular list of fandoms on Fan History.  Of course, the list of fandoms that appear there have not been updated since September 2008. :/

Then there is another way to guess at most popular fandoms.  That’s based on activity levels on LiveJournal.  This list isn’t all comprehensive and because of bot problems?  The list hasn’t been updated since March 31, 2009… but here it is!

Rank	Fandom	Total Activity	Previous rank
1	Twilight	14372	1
2	Meta	7649	2
3	America’s Next Top Model	2672	6
4	Pokemon	2470	5
5	House M.D.	2114	4
6	Gossip Girls	1628	12
7	Doctor Who	1624	10
8	WWE	1581	9
9	Merlin	1496	14
10	Lost	1405	19
11	Harry Potter	1346	8
12	Bones	1328	7
13	High School Musical	1220	3
14	Katekyo Hitman Reborn!	1038	13
15	iCarly	1033	16
16	Bleach	1020	11
17	Sailor Moon	995	15
18	Jonas Brothers	966	25
19	Naruto	944	18
20	NCIS	716	23
21	As the World Turns	709	64
22	the GazettE	685	20
23	Gackt	662	17
24	Ben 10	645	97
25	Mystery Science Theater 3000	607	29
26	Slayers	568	21
27	An Cafe	554	45
28	Life on Mars	548	32
29	The Office (US)	528	35
30	Transformers	519	22
31	Sports fan fiction	518	40
32	Soccer fan fiction	515	41
33	D.Gray-Man	508	52
34	30 Rock	480	42
35	Heroes	392	37
36	How I Met Your Mother	387	46
37	My Chemical Romance	386	131
38	David Tennant	382	30
39	Batman	378	128
40	Torchwood	353	28
41	Batman Beyond	352	159
42	One Piece	342	60
43	Man from U.N.C.L.E.	339	85
44	One Tree Hill	336	34
45	Fullmetal Alchemist	322	47
46	Ewan McGregor	320	36
47	Star Trek	319	51
48	Meta community	317	24
49	Lord of the Rings	306	49
50	Dancing with the Stars	306	48
51	Yu-Gi-Oh	301	31
52	Stargate SG-1	296	54
53	30 Seconds to Mars	296	50
54	Brand New	291	80
55	Saiyuki	268	43
56	U2	266	63
57	Princess Tutu	260	61
58	American Girls	259	78
59	Dollhouse	255	39
60	X-Files	254	160
61	Top Gear	252	87
62	Geoffrey Rush	233	103
63	The Mentalist	230	57
64	American Idol	217	73
65	Pushing Daises	215	79
66	Queer as Folk	211	74
67	Death Note	203	120
68	Britney Spears	197	72
69	Supernatural	189	55
70	Criminal Minds	185	62
71	Ugly Betty	182	65
72	Laurell K. Hamilton	175	171
73	Law and Order: SVU	172	69
74	Anita Blake	172	192
75	The Late Late Show	168	58
76	Craig Ferguson	168	59
77	L Word	164	75
78	The Sentinel	161	68
79	General Hospital	155	70
80	Manic	151	201
81	D’espairs Ray	150	44
82	CSI: Miami	147	94
83	Discworld	145	95
84	Prince of Tennis	143	1020
85	Neil Patrick Harris	138	108
86	Christina Aguilera	131	426
87	Serenity	122	82
88	Manchester United	122	38
89	Law and Order	121	119
90	Blake’s 7	121	166
91	The Young and the Restless	120	141
92	Ace Attorney	120	173
93	Vancouver Islanders	119	105
94	Shugo Chara!	119	89
95	Beatles	117	127
96	Zelda	115	111
97	Firefly	115	83
98	Bullet for my Valentine	115	149
99	Hanson	113	67
100	Days of Our Lives	113	96

Maybe you want that information based on another language?   How about Russian?  Then these fandoms are some of the most popular (at least in March 2009):

Rank	Fandom	Total Activity	Previous rank
1	Harry Potter	795	3
2	Watchmen	417	1
3	Radiohead	140	2
4	House M.D.	112	6
5	Firefly	75	14
6	South Park	71	4
7	Buffy: The Vampire Slayer	57	89
8	Hugh Laurie	56	26
9	Star Trek	43	38
10	Babylon 5	42	13
11	Simpsons	38	11
12	Battlestar Galactica	37	36
13	Futurama	34	9
14	Star Wars	27	5
15	Supernatural	20	21
16	PFC CSKA Moscow	20	8
17	Metallica	17	12
18	Blur	17	42
19	Terry Pratchett	13	10
20	The Cure	12	53

There are probably other ways to measure other popular fandoms but those are the ones that we have to measure popularity.