The Science Of Viral Vids.

Today I’d like to write about Kevin Allocca The Trend tracker for YouTube. Kevin’s Ted talk is titled “Why videos go viral”. I chose this presentation because the entertainment business is being filled with individuals discovered on YouTube. I was curious to see if there was a real formula to get over a million views. Kevin makes it clear that there is no formula but there are factors in creating a viral video.

First Kevin talks about tastemakers, which play an important part in the process. Almost every viral video has been mentioned, re-tweeted or posted on social networks. The “Friday” song by Rebecca Black is the perfect example the song had comedic potential so many tastemakers including web clip shows shared the vid and even did spoofs until the song topped out at 200 million views.

The other factor Kevin talks about is the unexpected. I believe humans are inherently inquisitive so they love to see things they haven’t seen before. People will flock to see a double rainbow if they haven’t seen it before but if you add unexpected funny commentary things can get interesting. We like to think about artists like Justin Beiber when we talk about artists who where discovered on You Tube and Kevin and I agree this will become more common over time basically making the web the place to have national auditions.

The last factor Kevin talks about is community. Web videos like “Prancersise “ and “Friday” lend themselves to hilarious spoofs that create great interactions within the general public. These interactions increase viewership even more.  So the consensus is who really knows which videos will go viral. What we do know is that the ones that do tap into all or one of these factors every time. This is great information for someone in the entertainment business because now we at least look for these factors in the marketing process to increase our chances of reaching a large audience.