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Hi I'm Kevin Allocca. I'm the trends manager of Youtube and I professionally watch youtube videos

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It's true

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So we are going to talk a little bit today about how videos go viral and why that even matters

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we all want to be stars. Uh celebrities, singers, comedians.

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and when I was younger that seemed so very very hard to do.

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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

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I mean, any one of you could be famous on the internet by next Saturday

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

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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]

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so how does it happen?

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three things

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tastemakers, communities of participation, and unexpectedness

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Alright Let's go

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[Background: Oh oh.oh my god oh my god (laughter) wooh oh wow]

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

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In 2010 it was viewed 23 million times

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This is a chart of what it looked like when it first became popular

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last summer

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but he didn't actually set out to make a viral video "Bear"

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He just wanted to share a rainbow because that's what you do when your name is "Yosemite Mountain Bear"

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and he had posted lots of nature videos in fact this video had been posted all the way back in January

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So what happened here

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Jimmy Kimmel

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actually

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Jimmy Kimmel posted this tweet that would actually propel the video to be as popular as it had become

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

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[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]

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So you didnt think that we could actually have this conversation without talking about this video I hope

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Uh Rebecca Black's Friday has become one of the most popular videos of the year

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it's been seen nearly 200 million times this year

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This is a chart of what it looked like and

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similar to double rainbow it seemed to have just sprouted up out of nowhere

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so what happened on this day

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Well it was a friday, this is true

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And if you were wondering about those other spikes

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those were also Fridays

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But what about this day, this one particular Friday

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Well Tosh.0 picked it up

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A lot of blogs started writing about it

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Michael J. Nelson from Mystery Science Theater was one of the first people to post a joke about the video on Twitter

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But what's important is that an individual or a group of tastemakers

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took a point of view and they shared that with a larger audience accelerating the process

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and so then this community formed of people who shared this big inside joke

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and they started talking about it and doing things with it

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and now there are 10 thousand parodies of Friday on Youtube

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even in the first 7 days there was one parody for every other day of the week

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Unlike the one way entertainment of the 20th century

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[In Text: Participation] This community participation is how we become a part of the phenomenon

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either by spreading it or doing something new with it

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[music]

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So uh Nyan Cat is a looped animation with looped music

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It's this

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Just like this

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It's been uh viewed nearly 50 million times this year

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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

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even cats were watching this video

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cats were watching other cats watch this video

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alright but

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[laughs]

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but what's important here what's important here

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is the creativity that it inspired amongst this techy-geeky internet culture

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there were remixes

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[music]

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someone made an old-timey version

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[music]

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and then it went international

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[music]

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An entire remix community sprouted up that brought it from being just a stupid joke to something that we can be apart of

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because we don't just enjoy now we participate

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[violin playing]

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and who could have predicted any of this

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who could have predicted Double Rainbow or Rebecca Black or Nyan Cat

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what scripts could you have written that would have contained this in it

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In a world where over 2 days of video get uploaded ever minute

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

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When a friend of mine told me that I needed to see this

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This great video of a guy protesting bicycle fines in New York City

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I admit I wasn't that interested

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[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]

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Yeah..

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By being totally surprising and humorous

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Casey Neistat got his funny idea and point seen 5 million times

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And so this approach holds for anything new that we do creatively

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and so it all brings us to one big question:

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[Background: What does this mean?]

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[In Text: What does it Meeeaan?!?]

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What does it mean

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Tastemakers, creative participating communities, complete unexpectedness

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These are characteristics of a new kind of media and a new kind of culture

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where anyone has access and the audience defines the popularity

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I mean as mentioned earlier, one of the biggest stars in the world right now

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Justin Bieber

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got his start on youtube

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No one has to green light your idea and we all now feel some ownership in our own pop culture

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and these are not characteristics of old media

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and they are barely true of the media of today

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but they will define the entertainment of the future

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Thank You