Well… related to my previous post How To Create A Viral Video – I ran into this series called Viral Video Film School. It’s a bit silly and sarcastic at times but he still has a few good points.

Like in this one, he says you should “snap up some animal fights”:

He mentions Battle at Kruger which ranked #6 on my Top 10 Most Viral Videos Of 2007 list and has gotten over 36 million views.

I’ve only watched a couple of videos from the Viral Video Film School series so if you find a video there that you think is cool let me know – I would like to check it out.

And related to my previous post Motivating quotes here is a quote I found interesting:

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

Well, take care – I’ll post more when I get back from my trip.

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Easter Egg

There have been rumors and allegations that there was a so-called “easter egg” added to 2.6 early in its development. These rumors and allegations are completely false!

That got me curious… :) So I went on Google to research this further.

Unlocking the easter egg

Apparently what you need to do is after saving a post you scroll down to “Post Revisions” and then click one of the revisions. At that point you should be able to compare a revision with itself (by selecting both left and right radio buttons at the same revision and click “Compare Revisions”). What happens next is pretty cool.

Here is a video that shows you what happens:

Easter Egg in WordPress 2.6 from Len Kutchma on Vimeo.

Easter eggs are always fun :) Have you upgraded your blog (if you’re using WordPress)? It’s always smart to upgrade as soon as possible, not just for the cool new features but also because of security risks.

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Wondering how you can make the Top 10 Most Viral Videos list? Check out this video I found about how to create a popular viral video:

Mine’s doing great, got over a million hits and it just landed me a job at a hot new media firm.

Specific areas include:

• Filming yourself sitting at your desk
• Hurting yourself
• Hurting others
• Using animals to hurt people…

Very funny parody :) So cheesy… ;) But this parody is fairly viral – it has gotten over 47,000 views (although it’s been more than 1,5 years since it was posted on YouTube – it has probably been posted on a few other places where it’s gotten several thousand additional views).

That’s one way to make your video successfully viral – make it funny. Also, if your video is about something related to the internet and internet culture then it’s likely to be passed around…

Here are a couple more videos/ads from the Viral Learning Center:

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(via iJustine)

This is an excellent example of how to create a viral video. It was posted March 20, 2008 and it already has 84,071 views. He also has some more internet marketing related rap videos on his YouTube channel.

If you’re trying to create a viral video you should consider how you can make it entertaining – if you analyze some of the most popular videos you’ll see that many of them have at least some entertainment value. Think about “What would make people watch this?”.

Oh, by the way – did you see the new Gmail feature that Google announced? It could come in handy to be able to make your mail appear to have been sent earlier – even mark it as people had read it ;)

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Happy holidays and a happy new year. At the end of the year people often look back over what happened that year. I think viral videos are fascinating – how a video travels around the world through word-of-mouth or click-of-link from person to person until millions of people have seen it. Sometimes this is just a personal video that the author perhaps just wanted to show to a few friends but had no idea millions of people would enjoy it – and sometimes several people have spent time and money creating a video that they then strategically market online…

Whatever the circumstances are viral videos are always entertaining – or at least interesting – otherwise they wouldn’t get millions and millions of views, right? Well, I picked a few of the popular videos I’ve noticed pop up in 2007 and ranked them against each other. I took the number of views the videos have right now and divided it by the date it was posted (well, actually how many days were left of the year when it was posted). Without further adieu I present to you The Top 10 Most Viral Videos Of 2007:

#10
Daft Hands – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

A fun little video – just one take. Probably just a boy/girl that was having fun and had no idea this cool video would get over 11 million views.

Views: 11,440,476
Added: June 06, 2007
Average (per day): 55,002.29 views

#9
me singing “what goes around“ Justin Timberlake

I’m pretty sure they were hoping this video would become viral. Looks like it worked – if you want to make a video viral just add Justin Timberlake ;) This is Dutch singer Esmée Denters and she was the first artist to be signed on the new Tennman Records label headed by Justin Timberlake.

Views: 13,094,860
Added: May 28, 2007
Average: 60,344.98

#8
CPDRC inmates doing the dance from Thriller

Amazing video – from the description on YouTube: “1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice! This is not the final routine, and definitely not a punishment! just a teaser.”

Views: 10,157,475
Added: July 17, 2007
Average: 60,823.20

#7
PARIS IN JAIL: The Music Video

Clever and funny video – very smart to take advantage of the hype around Paris Hilton going to jail.

Views: 12,928,112
Added: June 06, 2007
Average: 62,154.38

#6
Battle at Kruger

Amazing video – a bit longer than most viral videos (08:23) but definitely worth watching… this is nature at its best – Never give up. This authors of this video definitely got noticed – a clip from the description on YouTube: “NEWS: National Geographic has sent us back to Africa to develop a special giving the behind-the-scenes story on how we got this amazing footage. Potential airdate: Spring 2008″

Views: 22,696,930
Added: May 03, 2007
Average: 93,788.97

#5
Paul sings Nessun Dorma

This is a very interesting video with a plot twist ;) I didn’t see that coming… Very inspiring video – don’t judge a book by its cover, right? This is Paul Potts singing Nessun Dorma on the UK talent show “Britain’s got Talent” – it’s no surprise that he won.

Views: 19,690,787
Added: June 10, 2007
Average: 96,523.47

#4
How to Charge an iPod using electrolytes and an onion

Cool video – might come in handy if you don’t have access to electricity ;)

Views: 5,510,023
Added: November 10, 2007
Average: 108,039.67

#3
Chris Crocker – LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

This is the weirdest video on the list… not exactly entertaining but, uh… interesting. Well, it got a lot of views, some media exposure and I think I heard this Chris Crocker got a TV deal out of this. It probably helped that he was kind of taking advantage of the hype around Britney Spears.

Views: 14,803,559
Added: September 10, 2007
Average: 132,174.63

#2
The Landlord

Very funny video. Will Ferrel, Adam McKay & Co. used this video to launch their video site FunnyOrDie.com and it looks like it worked, big time.

Views: 51,292,692
Added: 8 months ago
Average: 196.523,72

…
and, drum roll please
…

The #1 most viral video of 2007 is:

Jeff Dunham – Achmed the Dead Terrorist

Funny video, pretty long (10:47) – looks like it’s ripped from Jeff Dunham’s DVD. But I think it’s cool that Jeff Dunham has allowed this to stay on YouTube (with over 21 million views he probably has heard of it being there) – he definitely understands that this will only help with sales of his DVDs, other merchandise and tickets to his show. I wish more companies/artists/entertainers would realize how much they can gain by letting a few minutes of their videos stay on YouTube.

Views: 21,601,141
Added: September 29, 2007
Average: 232.270,33

What do you think? Had you seen all of these videos? If you liked this list I would really appreciate it if you would Digg it :)

People might say that the Jeff Dunham video and “Paul sings Nessun Dorma” shouldn’t belong here since they weren’t posted by the copyright holder – but they are still on YouTube and they have gotten quite a lot of views…

If you take a look at this list you might notice that quite a few of them have celebrities in them or are referencing celebrities – so, if you want to make a really viral video you should think about that.

Honorable mention

A Special Christmas Box (aka “D*ck in a Box”). Although it was first posted at the end of 2006 it become quite popular in 2007 and even received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics. According to Wikipedia it got over 28 million views on YouTube – but NBC removed it from YouTube in October 2007.

If the embedded video above should disappear/not work you might be able to see the uncensored version (if you live in USA) here on NBC.com.

Another video that I want to mention that almost made the cut is Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday:

It has gotten over 12 million views in about 8 months and is quite an internet hit – they even referenced “chocolate rain” on the show 30 Rock :) It has also brought Tay Zonday some success – Dr Pepper got him to star in an advertisement for Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr Pepper.

Did I forget any popular viral videos? Let me know in the comments – I might add them to the post…

UPDATE
I totally forgot about Miss Teen USA 2007 – South Carolina answers a question

With 20,650,575 views and being posted August 24, 2007 it got an average of 161.332,62 views per day – and it would have been #3 on the list (pushing out “Daft Hands – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”).

I realize that my method of calculating the “viralness” of the videos might not be the best way – but it’s one way of seeing how popular they became. Most viral videos have a peak – a few days/weeks where they get the majority of the views. So the most recently posted videos might have a slight advantage on this list. I just thought that total views wasn’t accurate since those that have been online for a longer time have an advantage. Maybe it would be better to just take how many views the video got the first week/month… but sometimes videos don’t become viral until months after they are put online – often when a popular blog links to it.

Well, best of luck in the new year. I’ll see you again in 2008 :)

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Goodie Bag TV – Americans Love Lists

It’s true – lists are very popular online and I suspect people often write all kind of lists primarily as link bait – and it often works (to some degree). People like short, to-the-point bullet points that give them some interesting/entertaining information, right? But it’s not just online is it? Magazines often have articles that are based on lists – these two headlines were on the cover of October’s issue of FastCompany: “25 Widgets We Love” and “14 Designers To Watch”. And since it looks like it’s working – why stop? Like he says in the video: “We need more lists, we need lists of lists within a list” ;)

Another video I ran into today:

Here Comes Another Bubble – The Richter Scales

[Update: OK, it looks like the video has been taken down because of a copyright claim (of a photo used in the video). But apparently you can still watch the video here (at least for now)]

Pretty funny lyrics – and a catchy song too ;) Yeah, some people think there is another bubble going on. Perhaps – I mean, is Facebook really worth $15 billion?

This video is actually a pretty good link bait – and they even admit that it’s a link bait video: “won’t you blog about this song?” :)

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More details after the jump.

*** Warning, spoilers ***
Have you watched the video? OK, then you know that it was Felista from Royal Tours Africa that won this contest. I just contacted Felista and I’ll probably post a review in a few days.

Like I said in the video I got 32 entries – 4 people posted on their blog about this contest and got 5 entries each. When I started the contest 249 members had made this blog a favorite and now it stands at 275 – which ranks me at #87. Thanks to everybody that entered my contest – I’ll definitely have another contest soon. One thing I noticed is that the contest started a little slow – and I had to go and promote it a little bit to get a few more entries… So, if you are thinking about having your own contest on your blog you might want to have that in mind – Just go contact some of your blog buddies and anybody you think would be interested in entering your contest.

Talking about contests… I want to use the opportunity to enter Gary Lee’s iPhone contest. Gary has a cool blog about internet marketing and he is going to give away a free iPhone. He’s doing this to promote his new project about golf equipment and his partner’s site that is a online coupon code blog. Very clever… there’s been a lot of buzz around the iPhone so a lot of people want to enter. That’s another trick to a successful contest – have a very valuable prize.

Do you like contests? I want to have another contest soon and I’m open for ideas – do you have any suggestions regarding the rules/requirements and/or prizes?

Keywords: technorati, contests, winner, top 100, youtube, promote, gary lee, iphone

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The most recognizable feature of MyBlogLog is the “recent readers” widget (you can see it on the sidebar if you scroll down a bit). I think that’s what put MyBlogLog on the map – it has a kind of a viral aspect to it. But I realize now that it has been some time since I first saw MyBlogLog in action – It’s probably a year (even more) since I first saw this “7 Clicks Today” (or “3rd Most Popular Outgoing Link”) on some blogs. So, the original purpose of MyBlogLog was, like the name implies, to be a log (web tracker) for blogs.

When you join MyBlogLog you get a 3 day trial of their Pro features. Having a Pro account gives you real time stats of where your visitors are coming from, what page they’re visiting and what links they clicked. After the 3 day trial you are downgraded to a free account and then you’ll only see stats for yesterday and the days before. You’ll also only see the top 10 results for each of the 3 tracking categories (referring link, what is being read and links clicked).

Pro Account

A Pro account is $3 per month or $25 for a whole year – that’s a common price range for web 2.0 websites (like flickr). Having a Pro account would make sense for popular blogs that get hundreds of pageviews a day where it’s vital for the success of your blog to know exactly what your readers are doing right now. But for small blogs where you only need to check your stats every now and then a free account might be enough. Combined with a normal web tracker (like StatCounter) you should get all the stats you need – Just check StatCounter for (close to) real-time stats of where your readers are coming from and what they’re reading and then check MyBlogLog to see what links the readers clicked yesterday (and the days before).

More Traffic

It looks like MyBlogLog can bring you some extra traffic. Just a few minutes after creating my account I already had a few people view my profile and one guy had added my as a contact in their profile – pretty cool :) I think MBL is a great tool for bloggers – it can only help you. Also, on your profile there is a link to your blog and we all want more links, right?

Don’t forget to add your picture to your MyBlogLog profile – Then, when you’re logged into MBL and you’re visiting blogs that have the “recent readers” widget your photo will appear there. Other readers might then click your photo and go to your profile – there they’ll see links to all your blogs.

A good way to get more exposure and more traffic is by joining communities in your niche. You can join my MyBlogLog community here.

Spam

But as with all hot services people are going to abuse them. Because you can leave messages on people’s MyBlogLog profiles with hyperlinks you get a lot of random people with messages like “Hey, like ur site. chk out my site thx…”. I’m already getting spam on the “recent readers” widget. But the MBL team is working on this issue.

Video Review

Just for fun I decided to record a short screen capture of me checking out MyBlogLog and all its features. This is the first video (of many?) that I’ll post on this blog. Enjoy :)

Let me know what you think of this video… (you might need to turn up the volume a little bit to hear me properly)
Update: The video is on: YouTube, Google Video and Revver (better quality).

Keywords: MyBlogLog, Yahoo, review, hannes johnson, videos, viral, web 2.0, web-20, web2.0, analytics, web analytics, stats, web tracking, web traffic, more traffic, link building, links, spam, screen cap, screen capture, blogging

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