What Works on Youtube?

7 MUST-HAVE YOUTUBE ATTRIBUTES

to make your video watchable

(using viewing figures as a measure of success)

 

– feel free to add to my Completely Unscientific Taxonomy of YouTube Popularity. I started this a while back, and never got around to publishing it until now…

NOTE: Vids with More than one attribute are even more watchable.

NOTE: Yes, I’ve probably missed some good ones…

1. Unusual content – people, machines or animals doing something unexpected:
   Wedding parties dancing down the aisle, cat standing up on 2 feet, finch perfectly imitating construction workers
   are all great examples of this.
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2. Shocking or surprising or slapstick – mainly people falling over, or reacting to predictably shocking stimuli, such as scaring someone with a fake head. Extra points for pride before a fall. In fact, a lot of failblog videos have a slapstick element like Dance Fail.
   Corollary: Also pointworthy is the “Nelson Munce Haa-Haar”  factor i.e. joy at the misfortune of others.  Although in the case of Drunk Kitty there is a caveat: You can’t feel too bad about laughing, otherwise it cancels out the funny.
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3. Feelgood / cute factor – baby animals / kids being adorable – most people respond positively to cute in real life, it’s no surprise that enough people looking at the same things online.
   Corollary: In the case of David After Dentist, and Charlie Bit My Finger, these have elements of point 1 and point 2 about them too. For cats, there is also appeal in them displaying human attributes such as Cat Fixes Printer or yet again Standing Cat (original version)
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4. Mass  Participation – getting a bunch of  people to do something at the same time –  prisoners dancing to thriller, and improv everywhere’s frozen in grand central are both good  examples of the genre.  I think the appreciation of the effort involved is part of why this works.
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5. Incredible Talent or Effort in making – chat roulette piano guy and Lego Matrix fairly represent this section, although there are so many others who can go into this category.
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6. Bright lights –  extreme sheep LED Art – at the time of writing, Leamington Spa nightclub has only been up for a couple of weeks and is at 100,000 mark already. UPDATE it’s now at over 500,000 views.
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7. Watchability – We are impatient beings – and watching something 6 minutes long on the internet is like watching a 30 minute programme on the telly.  Evolution of dance  works because it’s instructive, nostalgic, well-structured and funny – even if the video quality ain’t that great, we’re happy to watch it because it gives us so many other reasons to do so. The recent phenomenon of Fenton the Dog chasing deer in London’s Richmond Park now has over 3,000,000 views at the time of writing.**
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A word on Repeat Viewing Potential – most of these videos are easy to watch more than once. In the case of Nyan Cat, Fenton the Dog and countless others, they stand up to more than just repeat viewing, for whatever reason.  What’s particularly interesting is that some of these videos generate re-mixes and inspire interactive participation.

For more on these, pop over to the BBC’s website here to watch “The Stuff that Memes Are Made Of“, where Joel Veitch and I attempt to make a meme out of a squirrel.

More ClickBits

They say work expands to fit the time available – and in this case, the 3 minute tech round up on the BBC’s website takes the better part of a day to make.

This post is really to chronicle the 3rd and 4th episodes so I can remember where I put them on the internet…  Click on the picture to get re-directed to the BBC’s site.

Clickbits Episode 4  – can’t see the link? click here: http://bit.ly/clickbits004

The really bonkers one to do was Episode 3 which I pushed down from Las Vegas during an evening where every other technology person there was also trying to send video.   Once the video was sent back to the UK,  Zoe and Gary put the pictures together on the other end.

It was very strange sending down raw material and seeing a put-together programme emerge at the end of it.

Clickbits Episode 3  – can’t see the link? click here: http://bit.ly/clickbits003

These links were filmed next to the Intel touch-wall, which was a giant interactive cube pulling pictures down from flickr. It was being run on what looked like a normal laptop – which surprised me – the graphics card in there must have been rather tasty.

If you want to see some pictures from CES 2010 , pop over to my flickr site here for a look round some of the weird and wonderful gadgets on display here.

Click Bits!

Pilot show Click Bits - Episode 2!

(RSS/Can’t see the link? here you go: http://bit.ly/clickbits002 )

This is what I’ve been up to the last month, as well as doing quite a bit for bbc click recently… including working with the marvellous Maggie Philbin on our futurology piece. She’s done such a brilliant post here about our visit to Kingswood Warren that I don’t need to add anything…

OK, I will add that we both turned up on the ShiftRunStop podcast last week.

Here are some behind-the-scenes pics of the birthing of ClickBits.

My bag with script in - and an impressive amount of useless stuff

– yes I did eat that twirl. And I didn’t bother taking pics of the usual tv stuff including filming pieces to camera, script wrangling and finding pictures to fit. Unless you want me to next time?

Also the madness of only having a finite amount of time to do an infinite amount of work is the sort of thing is familiar to techies everywhere. Editors, I’m thinking of YOU when I type this.

tape of episode 1 ! yes, tape! Click on this if you want to see episode 1, but episode 2 is better 🙂 Click on the top pic for that.

The grown-up edit suite was double booked for our first episode, but it didn’t stop us – we squeezed into a small office and crowded around a desk and computer meant for 1 person.  Final Cut Pro, in case you were wondering. And yes, we ate a LOT of choccy in  a room so cramped all our knees were touching.

on its way into the BBC system?

This was our 2nd attempt to ingest 3 mins of video into the BBC, we were thwarted by technology many times! It’s always worse when a BIG machine borks – I always (illogically, irrationally and incorrectly) expect computers with 4 screens to be, I don’t know, cleverer.

Humans 3, Machines 2

Finally, the wondrous Zoe (who is producing this with me and is the illustrious @zsk on twitter) came across this hidden terminal and executed some kind of Harry Potter spell that meant the machines had to obey her – and they did.

As I’m off to CES Las Vegas 2010 next week, Zoe and I will be attempting to make the 3rd Click bits episode a few thousand miles apart… we’ll be using yousendit and psychic powers to make that work, but if anyone can do it, it will be the 2 most stubborn people at the Beeb – us!

CES 2009 – battery! Nooooo

How incredibly ridiculous, I left 1/2 of my UK/US adaptor in the hotel, which means I’m on the clock with a minor uploading drama!  So the video might or might not make it up there, with 32 minutes remaining, it’s anyone’s game.

Coffee!! I need Coffee!!

Highlights so far have been a proliferation of newer, greener display technologies (hold tight for OLED on the vid) and an emphasis on mobile content consuming, including a projector that’s been built into a phone.

In fact, the phone-projector from Samsung (using DLP technology) was the gadget I featured for BBC Click during filming last night, that’s going to be broadcast on BBC World, and perhaps even on the internet site too, which is very exciting.

RSS Readers / Can’t see the link? Click here

Today I’ll go to my appointments on the show floor armed with my (fully charged!) camcorder, and later I’ll meet with the rest of the BBC Click team.

…and tonight I might be attending the Sony Online Poker party which last year had Fire-Eaters and Acrobats as well as many different food stations.

Below are a few piccies from Flickr uploaded earlier:

In front of 150" TV!

Samsung Mini Projector - up to 50" screen size

bottom phone is also a projector - to be featured on BBC Click

See you soon!

Nicole Cooke, Gold Medallist, shows me her medal!

… it’s heavy for its size, like a good bit of electronics.

Here’s a video of what happened when I met Nicole Cooke, the person who brought back the first gold medal for the UK in the Beijing 2008 Olympics.  She won the Cycling Road Race.

(Rss readers / can’t see the link? click here )

I turned up at an out-of-the-way studio, and fought my way through rails of incredibly fashionable sportswear accompanied by pumping loud music, gigantic umbrella flash reflectors, and lots of people.  This was a photoshoot for Nike’s Here I Am campaign featuring women in sport,   

Nicole was refreshingly down-to-earth about her impressive win, and when I asked where she kept her Gold Medal, she replied that when she wasn’t carrying it around for worky things like this, it was in a pouch at home – she only gets it out when people want to see it!  She talks about her training regime in the video, which sounds (unsurprisingly) punishing; obviously she looks great on it – I must admit being inspired to get in shape and eat less chocolate as a result of meeting her and the other ladies. 

Note: This video was meant to be released ages ago, however, a funeral, the flu and then all this new stuff at the BBC kind of got in the way.  Thank goodness for the xmas break, which meant I could finally get to work on these projects!  There’s one more vid post coming up before CES 2009, which couldn’t be more different from this video, it involves a sweary heavy metal band being interviewed in the back of a van.

And next week, I’ll be blogging from Las Vegas with all the latest gadgets from the Consumer Electronics Show.

Virgin Gadget Spy Episode 2 Now Released!

Gadget Spy Episode 2!

Yes, after all that hard work, we’ve done it, it’s been edited, and this is Episode 2 of Gadget Spy

 

Gadgets featured are:

 

Air Guitar Rockstar

Archos TV+

Power Monkey Solar Charger

PVT Video Transfer

Wattson

Jawbone headset 

Linksys Router

Port Coolfan

 

And if you’re wondering what the Bunny Rabbit was at the beginning of the video, it’s the Nabaztag Internet Bunny  which will tell you what the weather’s like and pull stockmarket and news data from the internet. 

 

…and for those of you who read my blog, here is a secret for you – hear the background music?  That’s mine, that is !! 

 

 

 

Flash Mob, Liverpool St London (UK)

So this weekend, apart from spending time in front of my new toy (see previous post and youtube clip) , I attended my first ever flash mob on Friday. I had the presence of mind to take the camcorder with me – I’ve just finished editing together the footage of this crazy event that actually made the news!

I was there with MissGeeky (who played Tosh in the Sweded Torchwood S2:13 Episode), whatleydude, and various others – after the event, we all went off to the Pitcher and Piano for the celebration of a job well done.

Have a look at the footage, embedded here

(RSS readers/can’t see the Vid? Click here)

Bar staff kindly placed Rick’s Finest on the jukebox – not sure they realised what was going on, and certainly when 30-40 of us sang along (some with lyric sheets) it did look mighty strange. City workers and pub regulars looked on with a mixture of bemusement and intoxication, which made the encore thoroughly worthwhile, especially when people started to join in.

_

… as for Flash Mobbing? I might have to add that to the ever-increasing list of things I’m getting addicted to.

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info

Lost at The Venetian in Vegas

Take a look at the picture on the left – what really got me is that I wasn’t outside, I was on the 3rd floor of the gargantuan Sands Expo / Venetian Mutant-Sized Hotel Complex.

So I spent today at the Billboard Digital Music Seminar at CES. If you add 8 hours of interesting interviews about the state of the music industry, together with (for some reason) air conditioners in the conference room set to “superconducting”, and a quite frankly impressive amount of coffee, I was not just disoriented, I was M&S disoriented.

Just to give you an idea of how odd it is to happen upon a mini Venice, this is the back view that I came from. It’s not enough that you’re wandering around St Mark’s Square, eating gelato and hearing opera music piped through the hidden speakers – to make it even more italian, the gondoliers are all accomplished singers, warbling sweetly as they punt you around the man-made canal.The more I see of this city, the more I’m falling in love with it. It’s so bonkers, I feel more normal.

Last night, I bumped into a whole bunch of female gamers, one of whom had the same birthday as me. We’re chatting in the taxi queue, and then we’re in a taxi to Caesar’s Palace, where we go to a place called Pure, a very exclusive club. I wish I could have stayed there, but, dear reader, I had to get back to do some editing, dedicated as I am to the cause.

I tried my hand at Craps tonight, and appear to have quite the knack of throwing the dice – I’m still amusingly foggy over the rules of this baffling game, but I put 20 bucks on the table, and walked away with 32 – yes, the last of the big spenders, but I’d rather spend my money on the coffee so I can make the most of my last few hours here. By the way, today’s vid is TV with a twist. Catch it at www.virginmedia.com/digital, or type “LJ Does Vegas” into Youtube and do please write something nice after you’ve seen it!

p.s. Here I am at 2am watching FileZilla do its thing from the hotel. I love the fact that because there are over 180,000 geeky tech folk converged in one place, myself included, we’re all trying to get online, all the time. The internet connection is pitiful 🙂 I also love the fact that the queue for Starbucks downstairs in the morning is amusingly long – every time I stand in it, I wonder if there would be the same queue for coffee if there was some kind of holistic health show on instead. I swear, caffeine is the drug of choice for the tech industry. Apparently, the coffee place in the convention centre actually ran out of beans on the first day of the conference, they’d underestimated the caffeine consumption of a bunch of techies by quite a large margin ! Right, I’m *really* going to bed now. Goodnight.

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info

Vegas or Bust

It’s crazy out here! I’m at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show – and it hasn’t even started yet, and I’m already overwhelmed. Nothing you see on the telly can truly prepare you for the opulent experience that is Las Vegas. Mix that with gadgets and I’m in a very happy place indeed. That, plus the fact that the hotel I’m in has a sushi bar downstairs that is absolutely incredible.

 

I’ve just been trimming footage for my video blog with Virgin Media, which should be reachable here: www.virginmedia.com/digital and it’s taking a lot longer than I thought – I got off the plane and haven’t stopped since, there’s so much to look at, and hopefully the vid will give you a taster of the gadget banquet that is CES.

Tomorrow (today!) I’m going to the Yahoo! keynote speech, and visiting Gibson to see their self-tuning guitar, which sounds heavenly. I once tuned someone’s guitar at Stratford Platform 8 because their B string was so painfully flat, tuning was the only non-violent solution.

 

Currently I should be asleep, but I want to ftp those files over to Virgin so you get to see the vid at around 5pm UK time – too excited about “nearly live reporting” to sleep a full night, so I’m going to finish sending these files over, and see if I can get a quick bath and snooze in before Yahoo’s keynote speech at 11am. Back soon!

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info