Someone may tell you of a You Tube video “gone viral,” but what does that mean? What does it take for a video to be labeled “viral?”
By definition, a video is considered “viral” if it gets 5 million views within 3 to 7 days, according to Forbes Magazine. This is no simple task, since every minute forty- eight hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. To say the least, viewers have a lot to choose from. Therefore, only miniscule fractions of a percent of the videos ever uploaded to You Tube actually have been considered “viral.”
Although the most popular of the list of viral videos include many that become viral just by chance because someone stumbled upon them and spreads the word, there are a few that were posted with the hope they would become viral and earn their makers money. Some ad agencies use this media to get the word out about their products, but others seek to earn a living off these videos because once a video has gone viral, its creators earn an income or advantage, depending on whether it is from advertising or the large mass of hits their videos get.
For instance, theblaze.com said that the two boys from the “Charlie bit me!” video will not need to work their entire lives and because of the revenue they got after their video went viral and they racked in the cash.
Videos generally become viral from three main components: the use of an “influencer,” the participation of large bodies of the population, or a “buzz” that can be acquired through popular social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. When a video has all of these social “ingredients,” it will get crucial views and gain the ever-desired status of being a viral video.
Many videos, such as the “Double Rainbow” video, began its path to fame start when an influential person mentioned it to a large audience or group of followers who then checked it out. Using a person of influence is said to be the easiest way to get a video “out,” if you figure out a way of getting that individual to check it out in the first place.
The infamous “Nyan Cat” video, which is a video and audio loop of a flying cat, was made famous by being shared by an interested audience, whose friends, in turn, would shared it with others, who shared it with more people. Today there are many different versions or parodies of “Nyan Cat” in different languages and based on different eras that also have many hits on You Tube, but not nearly as much as the original.
Buzz, the other component, usually comes hand-in-hand with influence, with the difference that buzz can sometimes be initiated by the maker of the video, who uses the many social networking sites to his or her advantage to spread the word about his or her video. This is a fairly simple task, but first, a creator has to have a good, or bad, enough video people would feel compelled to send it on to others.
To be considered “good,” a viral video, it must be funny, clever, shocking, controversial, interesting, or quirky, but, most of all, its core idea must be different. Even if the finished product has one or all of the above, it needs to be kept short, sweet, and to the point. Not many people will spend more than just a couple of minutes watching any video, despite its level of interest.
The title is another huge factor that influences who will watch a potentially viral video. Titles are another form of advertisement for the video. However, even if a video has everything on the checklist, that doesn’t mean that it is guaranteed to garner the number of views it may deserve.
There are a few sites that will help boost the chances that a video will get out, one of which is named Mekanism. This company has studied the flow and trends of the video community, including You Tube, MetaCafe, Funny or Die, MSN, AOL, TubeMogul, Blip.tv, and many more video sharing websites. Dan Harris, who was chosen by the creators of Mekanism to make a trial video to test the techniques they’ve developed for making successful videos, chose to base his test video around ASPCA, a dog and cat foundation, named “Hovercats.” This video fared well, as expected, with more than one million views over the last four months.
Giant Media is a kind of platform company that uploads videos and focuses them for target audiences for the benefit of that company, but for a price. Depending on the selected audience, and the determined gross and views that are depicted before-hand, the costs vary, with the largest estimated audience being the most expensive and a smaller venue a lot less costly.
The top viral videos change daily and are tracked by many “viral video” websites. One example is www.digg.com, which maintains a page of top stories, popular pages, and upcoming events that may grab audiences’ attention. The best website to find day-to-day changes and top charts of the video community is cleverly named www.viralviralvideos.com. You Tube’s home page is also a beacon of the most popular videos that they have received so far.
There are so many different ways to find a viral video, from a friend, an assignment, a Facebook status, or a Tweet, but the most exciting thing is to find or make one of your own and get it out there, with all of your social influence, because someone out there may appreciate it and send it on, giving you the opportunity to participate in the world’s huge online community.
