0:00:16.420,0:00:21.927
Hi I'm Kevin Allocca. I'm the trends manager of Youtube and I professionally watch youtube videos

0:00:21.927,0:00:23.593
It's true

0:00:23.593,0:00:28.545
So we are going to talk a little bit today about how videos go viral and why that even matters

0:00:28.545,0:00:32.927
we all want to be stars. Uh celebrities, singers, comedians.

0:00:32.927,0:00:36.545
and when I was younger that seemed so very very hard to do.

0:00:36.545,0:00:43.709
but now web video has made it so that any of us or any of the creative things that we do can become completely famous in a part of our world's culture

0:00:43.709,0:00:47.710
I mean, any one of you could be famous on the internet by next Saturday

0:00:47.710,0:00:51.828
But there are over fourty-eight hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute [In Text: 48:00]

0:00:51.828,0:00:57.528
and of that only a tiny percentage ever goes viral and gets tons of views and becomes a cultural moment [In Text: < tiny tiny % have more than 1M views]

0:00:57.528,0:00:59.728
so how does it happen?

0:00:59.728,0:01:01.295
three things

0:01:01.295,0:01:05.478
tastemakers, communities of participation, and unexpectedness

0:01:05.478,0:01:07.128
Alright Let's go

0:01:07.128,0:01:20.762
[Background: Oh oh.oh my god oh my god (laughter) wooh oh wow]

0:01:20.762,0:01:26.261
Last year, "Bear" Vasquez posted this video that he had shot outside his home in Yosemite National Park

0:01:26.261,0:01:29.940
In 2010 it was viewed 23 million times

0:01:30.510,0:01:33.777
This is a chart of what it looked like when it first became popular

0:01:33.777,0:01:35.794
last summer

0:01:35.794,0:01:38.861
but he didn't actually set out to make a viral video "Bear"

0:01:38.861,0:01:43.449
He just wanted to share a rainbow because that's what you do when your name is "Yosemite Mountain Bear"

0:01:45.728,0:01:52.745
and he had posted lots of nature videos in fact this video had been posted all the way back in January

0:01:52.745,0:01:54.895
So what happened here

0:01:54.895,0:01:55.848
Jimmy Kimmel

0:01:55.848,0:01:57.036
actually

0:01:57.545,0:02:02.980
Jimmy Kimmel posted this tweet that would actually propel the video to be as popular as it had become

0:02:02.980,0:02:08.611
[In Text: Tastemakers] because tatemakers like Jimmy Kimmel introduce us to new and interesting things and bring them to a larger audience

0:02:08.611,0:02:22.243
[Background: (Music) It's Friday, Friday gotta get down on friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend weekend. Friday Friday gettin' down on Friday]

0:02:22.243,0:02:27.161
So you didnt think that we could actually have this conversation without talking about this video I hope

0:02:27.161,0:02:30.311
Uh Rebecca Black's Friday has become one of the most popular videos of the year

0:02:30.311,0:02:32.710
it's been seen nearly 200 million times this year

0:02:33.248,0:02:36.110
This is a chart of what it looked like and

0:02:36.110,0:02:40.895
similar to double rainbow it seemed to have just sprouted up out of nowhere

0:02:40.895,0:02:43.428
so what happened on this day

0:02:43.428,0:02:46.045
Well it was a friday, this is true

0:02:46.045,0:02:47.794
And if you were wondering about those other spikes

0:02:47.794,0:02:49.745
those were also Fridays

0:02:53.806,0:02:57.961
But what about this day, this one particular Friday

0:02:57.961,0:02:59.937
Well Tosh.0 picked it up

0:02:59.952,0:03:01.343
A lot of blogs started writing about it

0:03:01.343,0:03:06.711
Michael J. Nelson from Mystery Science Theater was one of the first people to post a joke about the video on Twitter

0:03:06.711,0:03:09.935
But what's important is that an individual or a group of tastemakers

0:03:09.935,0:03:14.698
took a point of view and they shared that with a larger audience accelerating the process

0:03:14.698,0:03:18.094
and so then this community formed of people who shared this big inside joke

0:03:18.094,0:03:20.895
and they started talking about it and doing things with it

0:03:20.895,0:03:25.005
and now there are 10 thousand parodies of Friday on Youtube

0:03:25.359,0:03:29.341
even in the first 7 days there was one parody for every other day of the week

0:03:33.928,0:03:36.758
Unlike the one way entertainment of the 20th century

0:03:36.758,0:03:40.719
[In Text: Participation] This community participation is how we become a part of the phenomenon

0:03:40.719,0:03:42.778
either by spreading it or doing something new with it

0:03:42.993,0:03:52.627
[music]

0:03:52.627,0:03:57.448
So uh Nyan Cat is a looped animation with looped music

0:03:57.448,0:03:58.412
It's this

0:03:58.412,0:03:59.677
Just like this

0:03:59.677,0:04:03.378
It's been uh viewed nearly 50 million times this year

0:04:03.378,0:04:09.510
and if you think that that is weird you should know that there is a 3 hour version of this that has been viewed 4 million times

0:04:12.111,0:04:15.104
even cats were watching this video

0:04:18.828,0:04:21.963
cats were watching other cats watch this video

0:04:27.195,0:04:28.835
alright but

0:04:29.528,0:04:30.895
[laughs]

0:04:30.895,0:04:33.343
but what's important here what's important here

0:04:33.343,0:04:38.545
is the creativity that it inspired amongst this techy-geeky internet culture

0:04:38.545,0:04:39.811
there were remixes

0:04:39.811,0:04:42.875
[music]

0:04:42.875,0:04:44.478
someone made an old-timey version

0:04:44.478,0:04:48.028
[music]

0:04:48.028,0:04:49.844
and then it went international

0:04:49.844,0:05:05.214
[music]

0:05:05.214,0:05:12.795
An entire remix community sprouted up that brought it from being just a stupid joke to something that we can be apart of

0:05:12.795,0:05:16.061
because we don't just enjoy now we participate

0:05:16.061,0:05:19.927
[violin playing]

0:05:19.927,0:05:21.478
and who could have predicted any of this

0:05:21.478,0:05:24.591
who could have predicted Double Rainbow or Rebecca Black or Nyan Cat

0:05:24.591,0:05:28.794
what scripts could you have written that would have contained this in it

0:05:30.794,0:05:34.595
In a world where over 2 days of video get uploaded ever minute

0:05:34.595,0:05:38.999
[In Text: Unexpectedness] Only that which is truly unique and unexpected can stand out in the way that these things have

0:05:38.999,0:05:41.245
When a friend of mine told me that I needed to see this

0:05:41.245,0:05:45.293
This great video of a guy protesting bicycle fines in New York City

0:05:45.293,0:05:47.443
I admit I wasn't that interested

0:05:47.443,0:05:55.259
[Background: So I got a ticket for not riding in the bike lane but often there are obstructions that keep you from properly riding in the bike lanes]

0:06:05.461,0:06:06.227
Yeah..

0:06:09.228,0:06:11.711
By being totally surprising and humorous

0:06:11.711,0:06:17.812
Casey Neistat got his funny idea and point seen 5 million times

0:06:17.812,0:06:21.245
And so this approach holds for anything new that we do creatively

0:06:21.245,0:06:24.861
and so it all brings us to one big question:

0:06:24.861,0:06:29.827
[Background: What does this mean?]

0:06:29.827,0:06:34.071
[In Text: What does it Meeeaan?!?]

0:06:34.071,0:06:35.907
What does it mean

0:06:36.107,0:06:41.127
Tastemakers, creative participating communities, complete unexpectedness

0:06:41.127,0:06:44.791
These are characteristics of a new kind of media and a new kind of culture

0:06:44.791,0:06:48.994
where anyone has access and the audience defines the popularity

0:06:48.994,0:06:51.861
I mean as mentioned earlier, one of the biggest stars in the world right now

0:06:51.861,0:06:53.178
Justin Bieber

0:06:53.178,0:06:54.860
got his start on youtube

0:06:54.860,0:07:01.011
No one has to green light your idea and we all now feel some ownership in our own pop culture

0:07:01.011,0:07:03.445
and these are not characteristics of old media

0:07:03.445,0:07:06.095
and they are barely true of the media of today

0:07:06.095,0:07:09.161
but they will define the entertainment of the future

0:07:09.161,0:07:10.391
Thank You