Viral Videos

             Viral videos are an interesting topic, just like everything else that has to do with technology and particularly social media they have evolved so much from their beginnings. I am old enough to remember videos that went “viral” before platforms like Facebook or YouTube were mainstream. Videos that had hundreds of thousands of views on humor websites and being passed around via email. The amazing thing about these videos is that they are still widely known today even though they didn’t begin on YouTube. Videos like The Numa Numa Guy and Star Wars Kid were both before Youtube was even created. These videos were organically grown and passed along mostly for their humor content. They were funny home videos that were shared with friends and family and grew from there. There was never a thought when they were filming these videos that they might be viewed worldwide or that the stars would become internationally recognizable. The world of viral videos today is much different.

              Today viral videos are the goal. They are the goal of social media stars, like Youtubers and bloggers, and they are the goal of almost every company that makes video content for their social media platforms. You still get authentic, organic viral videos that get the “star’ their fifteen minutes of fame but so many of the viral videos we see today shared on social media today are planned directed and financed with the sole goal of becoming viral. Because more viral equals more exposure equals more money. This has become such a commonplace business practice that researchers have done studies trying to determine the formula for a viral video. One researcher Dr. Brent Coker has spent a lot of time researching a recipe for viral videos and he came up with four simple ingredients to the recipe.

1.       “Sharability”

2.       Connection – via music or nostalgia

3.       Large emotional range – going from feeling happy to sad to ecstatic

4.       Frission – a thrill or physical response like getting goosdebumps.

              There is even research done on the exact amount of time a video should last for maximum exposure and shares. I know personally that if I open up a video on Youtube and I see that it is longer than 5 minutes (excluding car repair videos) I don’t even waste my time watching it. A great example of a company using viral videos and basically nailing it every time is Buzzfeed with their Tasty videos. They found that food 40 seconds was the sweet spot for more shares and views of their videos. In February of 2017 Tasty videos garnered a total of 1.2 billion views on Facebook alone. Interestingly their videos don’t follow the above “recipe” for viral videos but they do contain actual food which seems to be a huge hit in the video world. They have turned these videos into an entire division of their company complete with cookbook and channels that cover many different cultures. Obviously they have the recipe down (forgive the pun) for viral food videos and it is making them a lot of money.

              Whether it is food or guys crying about Britney Spears viral videos aren’t going to go anywhere, more likely they will turn into their own field of job opportunities. Entire firms exists to make viral videos and that will only continue to grow as long as social media is still widely used.