Why videos go viral - Kevin Allocca

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Kevin Allocca is YouTube's Trends Manager, and he has deep thoughts about silly web videos. In this talk from TEDYouth, he shares the 4 reasons a video goes viral.

Talk by Kevin Allocca.

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