youtube, buzz feed & the “science” of virality · youtube logs more than 1.9 billion users...
TRANSCRIPT
YouTube, Buzz Feed & the “Science” of Virality
If you see the shoe color as pink, you are supposedly right brained and if you see it as green, you are said to be left brained.
Nearly 2 billion views! 78+ million views
“Discovered” in 2012 when her owner posted a video of the now famous feline. Grumpy Cat created a multi-million $ empire made up of fees from ads, appearances, merchandising, a book deal, etc.
YouTube
● Since its start in 2005, YouTube has grown from a site devoted to amatuer videos to the world's most popular online video site, with users watching 4 billion hours worth of video each month, and uploading 72 hours worth of video every minute.
● Founded Feb. 14, 2005 by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The idea was born at a dinner party in San Francisco about a year before the official launch.
On April 23, 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim posted the very first video to YouTube,
entitled "Me at the Zoo."
The idea for what became YouTube came from two key events in 2004: Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl & the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean.● The FCC received 500 thousand complaints for the show, CBS was fined $550 thousand, the NFL
was asked to refund the $10 million they were given by the halftime show sponsor.● On Sunday morning, Dec. 26, 2004, a powerful undersea earthquake registering 9.1 on the Richter
scale struck the coast of Indonesia, which set off a tsunami.. Within 20 min. Of the earthquake, 100+’ waves hit the coastline killing 100 thousand people. Waves continued on to Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka, killing tens of thousands more. In all, nearly 230,000 people were killed, making it one of the deadliest disasters in modern history.
● Nike was also one of the first major companies to embrace YouTube's promotional potential. ○ Consider the reach of campaigns today - “Dream
Crazier” published 2 months ago already has nearly 10 million views.
● YouTube struck a deal with NBC in June 2006, helping the traditional media company enter the new digital age.○ NBC asked YouTube to post a clip from SNL
called "Lazy Sunday," which ended up attracting a lot of attention for YouTube. Beginning of a partnership with the network.
● Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2006.○ At the time Google called it "the next step in the
evolution of the Internet." At the time, YouTube only had roughly 65 employees.
In September 2005, YouTube got its first one million-hit video (a Nike ad of
Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho receiving his pair of Golden Boots.)
● YouTube launched a program to let people get paid for their viral content in May 2007.○ Made it possible for everyday people to turn
their hobbies into a business. Within a year, the most successful users were earning six-figure incomes from YouTube
● Google rolled out their first ads on YouTube in August 2007. (Banners ads on the lower 20% of videos.)○ YouTube today makes a percentage of their revenue
from advertising (sponsored, embedded, ads between videos, banner ads) & now its subscription service.
● YouTube expanded into music video streaming with Vevo (2009), video rental (2010), YouTube Live (2011) and began producing original shows (2011). In April 2009, Usher introduced the
world to Justin Bieber via a video on YouTube
First posted in 2007, Charlie & his brother are now 13 & 15 and have
earned over $1.3 million in royalties and nearly a billion hits on YouTube for this
accidentally shared home video.
Defining Virality
The tendency of an image, video or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one internet user to another.
“How can a student with no context in the media reach millions of people about an issue he knows very little about?” - J. Petetti
Case study in virality:
Peretti sent an email to 12 friends -> Within 3 months, 1 million people saw the emails & Peretti was on the Today Show debating labor practices
BuzzFeed Laboratories - Origin Story
● After the Nike incident, Peretti said, “In the long run, this episode will have a larger impact on how people think about media than how they think about Nike and sweatshop labor,” he concluded.
● The experience of the political power of email forwards led Peretti to coin his own term: “contagious media.”
● The term caught on and shortly after the Nike incident, Peretti joined the research & development branch of an art-and-technology site Eyebeam. There he founded the “Contagious Media Lab.”
Early experiments in “contagious media”
● Black People Love Us
● The product of a Contagious Media web competition, Forget-me-not Panties was a site advertising a fake product that was said to GPS track & temperature monitor the wearer of the supposedly tech-enhanced women’s underwear.○ Reaction: the site garnered over 600
thousand views during the competition alone (with the most feedback coming from enraged feminists & fetishists who wanted to buy a pair of the fake underwear)
● Peretti learned that “If there’s a way for your product to be polarizing, that’s one sure way to get a lot of exposure - if you can get two groups of people to argue about it.” - Peretti
BuzzFeed is Born
BuzzFeed turned these experiments into a business in 2006. ● BuzzFeed used a new model
of advertising based on creation of content, sharing of content and then studying patterns & responses to that content, & use that data to further manufacture views, clicks, shares and virality.
The BuzzFeed Business Model - Sponsored
ContentBuzzFeed as a business model relies on native advertising (the use of paid ads that match the look, feel and function of the media format in which they appear.)● Instead of banner or display advertising,
BuzzFeed makes their money off of promoted posts & stories told on behalf of so-called Brand Publishers.
While many media companies struggle to survive, BuzzFeed is prospering thanks to sponsored content.
Behind the Scenes
● From the start, BuzzFeed has employed a social- sharing strategy to promote content rather than the more traditional advertising/content distribution model. ○ Capitalized on a network of millions of bored office workers who were open to any content
that relieved boredom. This “Bored at Work Network” targets workers looking to pass their time on social media, and whose enthusiastic consuming or sharing of content can make a post or a video go viral in hours.
● What types of early content did BuzzFeed produce? ○ Listicles○ Quizzes
■ How sensitive is your OCD radar? quiz - shared 3.4 million times since it was released in 2018
■ What city should you actually live in? quiz - 22 million+ times since it was released in 2014
○ Short videos
BuzzFeed & Viral video
37+ million views
8.5 million views & countless copycats
● Founded in 2015 at the pinnacle of Facebook’s boom years, Tasty quickly emerged as BuzzFeed’s fastest growing revenue source.
● As of today, consumers have spent 500 million-plus hours watching Tasty videos and have shared them more than 800 million times. In some months, its viewership has eclipsed three billion views. ○ Why? As former New York Times restaurant critic Frank
Bruni wrote in the Atlantic about food TV’s appeal, watching this type of media is a “passive, mind-resting experience. [Viewers] want something that doesn’t require close attention, the way a twisty plot might. Something akin to visual music. Something ambient, in a way.”
● Tasty makes most of its money from the sponsored videos that it makes for brands
BuzzFeed’s Formula: Emotional connection + Science/data
STEP I: EMOTION/CONNECTION
BuzzFeed has learned that consumers share video content for 5 main reasons:● To be social ● To express how they are feeling about a particular topic● To show off ● To prove they were the first ones to find something● To make friends & colleagues laugh
Buzzfeed operates in part on the premise that we all want to be part of a community and to identify with other people (that can happen by bonding over a love of milkshakes or remembering what it was like to go to school in Ohio in the 90’s) = the content they create is therefore designed to play to this desire to connect.
Emotionally connected content
Informational content
BuzzFeed’s Formula (cont.)
STEP II: Science/Data
● BuzzFeed uses an algorithm called ‘ViralRank’ to determine what content is being shared across social media in real-time. ○ It can then optimize the promotion of that video or post to increase its
reach even further. ○ This data can also determine the kind of content that readers and viewers
engage with, which in turn feeds into future programming strategies.
Consider the radical shift in media that the internet has made possible:● YouTube logs more than 1.9 BILLION users a month and the BuzzFeed’s
site logs about 200 million unique visitors a month (not counting the millions of videos shared to other platforms)
● Traditional news outlets like The New York Times recorded about 302 million views per month in April 2019 and tv networks like NBC bring in about 1.5 million viewers per month.
VS
And, for good measure, one last widely shared, watched & much mimiced video… Jim & Pam’s wedding from The Office.