Hi I'm Kevin Allocca. I'm the trends manager of Youtube and I professionally watch youtube videos
It's true
So we are going to talk a little bit today about how videos go viral and why that even matters
we all want to be stars. Uh celebrities, singers, comedians.
and when I was younger that seemed so very very hard to do.
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
I mean, any one of you could be famous on the internet by next Saturday
But there are over fourty-eight hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute [In Text: 48:00]
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]
so how does it happen?
three things
tastemakers, communities of participation, and unexpectedness
Alright Let's go
[Background: Oh oh.oh my god oh my god (laughter) wooh oh wow]
Last year, "Bear" Vasquez posted this video that he had shot outside his home in Yosemite National Park
In 2010 it was viewed 23 million times
This is a chart of what it looked like when it first became popular
last summer
but he didn't actually set out to make a viral video "Bear"
He just wanted to share a rainbow because that's what you do when your name is "Yosemite Mountain Bear"
and he had posted lots of nature videos in fact this video had been posted all the way back in January
So what happened here
Jimmy Kimmel
actually
Jimmy Kimmel posted this tweet that would actually propel the video to be as popular as it had become
[In Text: Tastemakers] because tatemakers like Jimmy Kimmel introduce us to new and interesting things and bring them to a larger audience
[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]
So you didnt think that we could actually have this conversation without talking about this video I hope
Uh Rebecca Black's Friday has become one of the most popular videos of the year
it's been seen nearly 200 million times this year
This is a chart of what it looked like and
similar to double rainbow it seemed to have just sprouted up out of nowhere
so what happened on this day
Well it was a friday, this is true
And if you were wondering about those other spikes
those were also Fridays
But what about this day, this one particular Friday
Well Tosh.0 picked it up
A lot of blogs started writing about it
Michael J. Nelson from Mystery Science Theater was one of the first people to post a joke about the video on Twitter
But what's important is that an individual or a group of tastemakers
took a point of view and they shared that with a larger audience accelerating the process
and so then this community formed of people who shared this big inside joke
and they started talking about it and doing things with it
and now there are 10 thousand parodies of Friday on Youtube
even in the first 7 days there was one parody for every other day of the week
Unlike the one way entertainment of the 20th century
[In Text: Participation] This community participation is how we become a part of the phenomenon
either by spreading it or doing something new with it
[music]
So uh Nyan Cat is a looped animation with looped music
It's this
Just like this
It's been uh viewed nearly 50 million times this year
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
even cats were watching this video
cats were watching other cats watch this video
alright but
[laughs]
but what's important here what's important here
is the creativity that it inspired amongst this techy-geeky internet culture
there were remixes
[music]
someone made an old-timey version
[music]
and then it went international
[music]
An entire remix community sprouted up that brought it from being just a stupid joke to something that we can be apart of
because we don't just enjoy now we participate
[violin playing]
and who could have predicted any of this
who could have predicted Double Rainbow or Rebecca Black or Nyan Cat
what scripts could you have written that would have contained this in it
In a world where over 2 days of video get uploaded ever minute
[In Text: Unexpectedness] Only that which is truly unique and unexpected can stand out in the way that these things have
When a friend of mine told me that I needed to see this
This great video of a guy protesting bicycle fines in New York City
I admit I wasn't that interested
[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]
Yeah..
By being totally surprising and humorous
Casey Neistat got his funny idea and point seen 5 million times
And so this approach holds for anything new that we do creatively
and so it all brings us to one big question:
[Background: What does this mean?]
[In Text: What does it Meeeaan?!?]
What does it mean
Tastemakers, creative participating communities, complete unexpectedness
These are characteristics of a new kind of media and a new kind of culture
where anyone has access and the audience defines the popularity
I mean as mentioned earlier, one of the biggest stars in the world right now
Justin Bieber
got his start on youtube
No one has to green light your idea and we all now feel some ownership in our own pop culture
and these are not characteristics of old media
and they are barely true of the media of today
but they will define the entertainment of the future
Thank You