Anyone know a good bit (or more than me) about YouTube & viral videos?

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I'm not sure how to go about looking this up - any suggestions?

I'm curious to know what constitutes "a lot" of views on a video as it's ramping up to "going viral".

I don't need anything close to exact figures, just ballpark. If on the first day it's a local news story and 10,000 people see it online, then it gets reposted, would 100,000 views in two days be considered "a lot", half a million? What?

Oh jeez, I have no idea how to gauge this.
 

MaeZe

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I would think there would be different routes to going viral from a slow climb to say, one that gets a news media boost early on. Then there are the minions that purposefully insert things into social media sites. So for example a company makes an ad disguised as an interesting video then talks it up on social media.
 

ElaineA

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Yeah, I don't think there's one right answer. My daughter is a social media expert but they look at SO many datapoints. One thing to bear in mind is, say, for a Beyonce video to be considered viral she'd have to have a lot more views, because she's "guaranteed" a certain number by her fanbase. But for Average Joe to go viral, that number would be much lower. So hits/time compared to average is probably the best indicator for someone not famous to have an out-of-the-blue viral event. If you normally get 2 views in 8 hours and suddenly you get 100 views in 1 hour, there's something possibly viral happening.

(I suspect they keep the word "viral" undefined so anyone with an item with an unusual number of hits can call it "viral." It's allllll one big marketing ploy.) :foilhat:
 

ElaineA

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One other thought I had was, if you're using newspaper article/video hits, you might be able to talk to your local paper and see what the range of views their norm is and go from there. Like, I'd expect the post-game Panthers news to get a lot of hits locally, but when Cam Newton got hit in that awful car wreck, everything I saw out here was from the Charlotte paper. So people nationally (and internationally, probably) clicked on that and the numbers must have been huge. Maybe their online-division people would be helpful in gauging what that looks like, numbers-wise.
 
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CWatts

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If you want to check how something builds over time, a live blooper on my local news from this morning is starting to spread. I wouldn't say it's viral yet but it has potential. Plus it's pretty funny esp. their reactions.

https://youtu.be/MfbTF9Hc6Ow
#checkyoupanties
 

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I work in social media, and a video that gets millions of views within any given day is a pretty big deal. A few big events can potentially drive 10-50 million views in a day (Beyonce, Superbowl).

Viral refers to how a video spreads. If people are sharing the video with their friends, talking about it in real life, then it's viral. If it's Beyonce's new album with a massive marketing campaign and TV commercials, then it's not viral.

Big-name publishers can get millions or tens of millions on the first day they launch a video, because they can send it all their fans. Normal people whose video goes viral would have a slower ramp-up, say, over a week or 2. An aggressive but reasonable ramp-up is going up by a factor of 10 each day (5 people see it the first day, then 50, then 500, etc.). In real life, usually some news outlet with a lot of fans picks up the video and there is a giant spike or two. Popular videos usually stay popular for about 2 weeks.

Hope that helps :)
 

Xelebes

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From what I have seen of the term "viral", the number of shares is more important than the number of views. Some uploaders might not have a lot of shares but their videos get watched a lot. This usually happens when somebody has a lot of subscribers or has significant and sustained commercial backing like music videos from large labels. Obtaining the number of shares can be tricky as they are not readily present to be viewed.
 

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I work in social media, and a video that gets millions of views within any given day is a pretty big deal. A few big events can potentially drive 10-50 million views in a day (Beyonce, Superbowl).

Viral refers to how a video spreads. If people are sharing the video with their friends, talking about it in real life, then it's viral. If it's Beyonce's new album with a massive marketing campaign and TV commercials, then it's not viral.

Big-name publishers can get millions or tens of millions on the first day they launch a video, because they can send it all their fans. Normal people whose video goes viral would have a slower ramp-up, say, over a week or 2. An aggressive but reasonable ramp-up is going up by a factor of 10 each day (5 people see it the first day, then 50, then 500, etc.). In real life, usually some news outlet with a lot of fans picks up the video and there is a giant spike or two. Popular videos usually stay popular for about 2 weeks.

Hope that helps :)
Great info, thanks.

Since you mentioned YouTube specifically, you might check out their trending tool.

Looking at the top ten or so provides some information for what makes something "viral."

There's a mix of topical (like Chapman's save last night for the Cubs) and political, and those items posted by or about famous people. Plus items posted by social media production/distribution channels like Buzzfeed.

Oh, and one from Vox that would be of special interest around here - "How you could get away with murder in Yellowstone's "Zone of Death"

Probably worth mentioning that "viral" is also relative. It's that "filter bubble" thing again.

For example- A video that 10% of a high school population looks at would now be in the top listings as "popular" for anyone going to the "YouTube" channel at school. A search for the keywords that describe it (say, "drunk teacher fail") would cause it to show up near the top of the page for anyone doing a search for those words in the school. Then a few of those students or staff members post links to it on their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest pages. An hour or three later and it is in the top results for almost everyone in town, just because they share several geographic and digital characteristics.

That doesn't mean that the entire planet is actually watching that video. But, here in "our town" a Google, Bing, or YouTube search will sure make it feel like it.

Hope that helps.