Blog 13

They way I see it, media is a result of economics and business decisions. Companies will produce media and advertisements if it fits this example. A modern day model of this phenomena is represented by Chris Anderson's the "The Long Tail." In "The Long Tail," Anderson describes the current scenario of the internet affecting the way media operates. One of the key components that differs from our modern day media is that the overhead costs for some digital goods have substantially decreased. This has lead to more availability of digital goods, ex. numerous YouTube videos when compared to the amount of TV shows available to us.

So back to the original question, who owns the media? Well, in terms of capital.... then corporations own the media. However the content of the media has to be up to par for consumers to be interested in watching it. Given this phenomena, then individuals own the media.

It really comes down to what you believe. In my opinion, Corporations are controlling the media through subtle directions. For example, there are numerous copyright violations on Youtube if you use a song that someone else made. If the media was truly owned by the people, then this would not happen.

Blog 13 Who owns the media

Technology and media evolves, that is really the main function of all technology to advance upon itself and in doing so create a more covenant tool for us. Reingold does have a point in that most people will not utilize their technology, really how many people do you know that just use pc's for web surfing and term papers, occasionally a low end game. As some one who uses computers for art and contributes directly technological evolution though my participation in the Linux community I have to agree and disagree with Reingold. I see his point but I can't quite see it applying to me for see. For me technology hasn't really evolved I have just found more exciting ways to implement it

Blog 13: Who Owns the Media

The way I see it, media is a in a constant state of flux. It never seems to stop evolving as it assimilates new technologies and social groups to get points across. Although the news is shifting from being privatized to a more public and apolitical stance, the news itself has not changed in the sense that its foundation is entertainment to its audience to drag in attention. It is supported by advertisements more now than ever and I do not see that changing anytime soon. In my personal experiences, the evolution of my personal technology has grown out of control. My first computer was a fun toy that my dad actually used for work, costing no more than $250. Ten years later I have been through more than a handful of computers, each more expensive than the last. In addition to the desk top desktop assimilation, my pockets have exploded (not from spare cash) but debt built in the form of microprocessor-rich devices like cell phones, ipods, cameras, and pagers… just kidding, no pagers. I have always considered myself ahead of the tech learning curve and also an early adopter of new tech. I; however, am unsure of my future as a geek, it seems that anyone is capable of almost the same final product as I am with technologies that focus on simplifying what were once difficult and impossible tasks for the average Joe. I am in fact, about to jump onto a ship that I am unsure of its destination. On Friday, I will be receiving a HTC Evo 4G handset that is the first 4G communication device to be sold in USA (via Sprint + Clearwire networks). What will this semi-promised boost in internet speed give me? Quite possibly a short head start as opposed to my peers who will probably take a year or two until they feel the need to adopt this tech. Technology, why am I addicted to you, and why do you cheat on me with everyone else?

Who owns the Media?

Reingold's relationship with media and technology seems to contrast with my own, as Reingold is old enough to see the drastic changes within technology and is able to compare his past experiences with his current. Being younger, I think my relationship with technology hasn't evolved as much; when I started using a cellphone, text messaging was one of the basic features. I'd never used a phone that couldn't text. It's only now that I'm in college and exposed to so many different layers of technology that I'd never fully utilized that I'm beginning to understand Reingold's experience. I think access to technology has a lot to do with how one is able to relate to media and adapt to new conventions within society where technology is concerned.
I used to live in the south, in a rural area, and I remember not being able to have high speed internet at home, though I was able to use it in town and at school. Knowing that technology was there, but not being able to fully utilize it, was my first experience with the changing technological landscape. Years later, I'm beginning to see it with cell phones. New phones are being made with cameras towards the user, a precursor to video calls, and I still have my old brick of a cell phone. I'm imagining when I'll be persuaded into spending the money I really don't have for a phone I really don't need because of the advances made in technology influencing culture.

Who owns the media

Changes in the media have definitely affected my life. I was not used to using social networking sites to meet people when everybody else had a facebook. Three years ago when I first came to college I did not have a facebook. Everybody else had already met their roomates through facebook and had made some friends that were in their dorms through facebook. I on the other hand had not. I was not part of any networks and I didn't know anybody through facebook. I felt somewhat disconnected because I didn't know things about people I had never met before meeting them, like alot of the other freshman did.
I don't have a facebook now either and it definitely affects me. My friends always tell me to get one, like it will somehow affect them in some way. It seems like somebody could throw a party and not tell anybody about it in real life, but people will still come because it is on facebook. It makes me feel slightly disconnected but not enough to have a facebook. I think it makes other people more uncomfortable that I don't exsist in internet and they cannot identify me because of it. They can't read my profile or look at my pictures and therefore they cannot judge me in the way that they can judge people with a facebook, and this makes them uncomfortable or uneasy.

Blog 13 - Who Owns Media

I think that even though Reingold states that he only means to inform us about the future path we are taking, I think he sides more on the negative attachment the of new media definition. From my available understanding of my relationship to the media is that I am not quite up to par to the mainstream users of the media channels. However, I still portray the symptoms of lost connections when I am not always connected to the internet or have my mobile phone with me 24/7.

Last summer I went on a 3-day weekend camping trip in Bodega Bay. When my friends and I arrived at the site, I realized I forgot the most important thing, my cellphone! MY first reaction is panic and lost of connection to everyone! The funniest thing is that I didn't realize the people I was with at the moment because I wished I had my cellphone. This creation of an illusion of a lost connection has been created in our culture through the commodity of mobile phone and mobile internet. Afterwards, I forced myself to calm down, and join everyone at the camp. The trip came and gone faster than I wish it had. My friends and I told ghost stories during the night, built sand castles, buried each other in sand, swam, and really just BONDED! I had so much fun outside of what contains that mobile communication device that I have forgotten about instantly wanting to check my phone or if anyone texted me or updating my twitter about what I am doing. I simply had fun with those around me physically. This experience really made clear to me that one of my relationship to the media has some form of passiveness as well as remembering that media like mobile devices with internet connection, is not necessarily "needed" to connect with others. I have only forgotten the the old ways of social networking as these changes are occuring in media.

Another example of my relationship to the media concerns the fact that even with the availability for participatory interactions in web 2.0, I feel that my personality still prevails against intense participation in facebook updates, twitter, and youtube uploads about self. For example, I sometimes feel like I'm left out of my generation's fad in terms of what's in and what's not in terms of new interaction social network ideas like twitter and tumbler. I remember when facebook was in it's peak years and I made an account. Then I would try to copy what others had on their facebook page that I thought would make me look more interesting, extravert, etc. So I kept updating my status trying to be different, post images that were different, and portrayed myself as "unique" and a deep person. After awhile, I realized that keeping up with these things to show people who I am was ironically doing the opposite. I didn't care for what people thought of me. I thought that this was the thing to do, but I am a very lazy person in terms of trying to express myself to people online that I don't even know very well. I ask myself why I would bother trying to show these people who I am if I will never really interact with them in person even if we did go to the same high school before. Thus, my personality lacks interest in these social networking even when there's a lot of
participatory channels. Ultimately, with the changes in media, my relationship with the media will never be quite up to par to the mainstream users.

Blog 13

Growing up and looking back at how our society shaped by the transformation of new technology changes our dependency on how to communicate. I remember when I was young, I hardly spent time on the phone or the computer. I remember on the last day of my last year in middle school was when I got my first cell phone. Nothing really changed after that, but my use of the internet began to change. At first, all I used the computer for was IMing, gaming, and communicating through a website called, Xanga. A couple years after that, I realized that there was so many things I could do as friends introduced me to Myspace, Facebook, friendster, Skype and etc. that it got to be a whole new experience on how to communicate to the point you didn't have to meet your friends anymore. Why meet up with them when you can meet up with anyone else on the internet? But then, some things got a little creepy. I realized that not only did I attract my old buddies, but creepers as well. The internet does become a personal catalog for others to see and I began to see more reports on children missing because they were meeting other people on the internet.

Another experience I had with the new technology is the use of texting. At first, I HATED it because why should you have to work out your fingers when all you can do is call them? Make some use of your fingers by dialing the numbers... but I guess people like gaining some finger muscles. Why don't ya flex it out sometime to see how much you text. I notice that people do not pay attention anymore. And I'm talking paying attention in general. What I hate the most is when people are texting during a lecture or when you are in the middle of talking, they always look on their phone hoping that someone texts them. Oh, and my personal favorite, people who text when you are talking on the phone with them. Does anyone care what anyone says anymore? Technology somehow creates a new world for us making things easier in our lives, yet somehow destroys us leaving us defenseless to do anything on our own anymore.

Blog 13- Smartmobs

I think that I have definitely experienced the changes in media, especially the changes in internet accessibility and dependence. Today students rely heavily on the internet, at first it was used to correspond with one another via e-mail or to play games, however, now students use the internet to do research and to network. This change has been a drastic one only because now I could do research on my phone if I really wanted to. Having internet on your phone is slowly going from a luxury to a necessity. I feel like the odd one out at times because I do not have a mobile device that can connect me to the internet, unless I carry my laptop around with me. Although I am quite tech savvy and can work a smartphone as well as the next nerd, I am still left out of the loop because I don’t have a smart phone with internet access. This is similar to the story in the article where the older members of a group were excluded from looking at a text because the younger person did not feel the older person would understand the media or the conversation.

Another experience that I have had with the change in media is definitely texting. Initially it was something new and interesting that I could do with my phone, but now it has become so much more than that. There are rules and texting etiquette, there are things that you could read into or things you shouldn’t read into. All of this is through a little message that is typically less than 200 characters long. Texting has become my go to method of communication rather than just calling the person. I feel that by texting I am not bothering the person, and they have the option to read the text later and respond when they can. However, they can do that with a phone call too. Not going to lie I have fallen into the texting thing, and I constantly keep in touch with friends this way. I know it is not personal, which is something that the article talks about. I am guilty of being one of those people that walk around almost aimlessly with my vision focused squarely on my phone and what I am typing. I have come to anticipate texts and read too far into a very late reply to my initial text. I feel that these are the two main things that I have experienced in the change of media and technology.

Viral Video Project

We posted the video on two YouTube accounts, and one account on Break.com; because of the format of the video, we were unable to post it to Dailymotion.com. We agreed to track the progress of the video on our separate YouTube accounts, and I monitored the video on my Break.com account.

Using Facebook and word-of-mouth, we spread the word to everyone we knew, asking them to watch our video on YouTube and leave comments about their impression. We posted the video on Break.com as a control test, and told no one that our video was on this site. The success for the Break.com control test was poor, with only ten views and no comments. The success of the video on my YouTube account was far superior; the end result was 125 views, and seven comments. The first six days of tracking the video on my YouTube account were the biggest bursts in views, with 63 views after the first day, followed by 88 views by the end of the third day, and 105 by the end of the sixth. The last six days crept along slowly, with no big jumps in between.

Of the seven comments left on my YouTube account and my Facebook, three of them stood out as having some participation with the project's critique of media. The YouTube user Renegadevibe made constructive suggestion about our video and sound editing, as well as asking other viewers to check out his own videos. A commenter from Facebook, Sampson Li, thought that the video had an “old documentary feel”. And another Facebook friend, Yentl Ip, agreed with our interpretation that WoW was definitely “way too much” for beginners entering the gaming community. The most detailed comment came from the YouTube user, Canterios, who said, “This was awesome. It was like Minority Report meets The Matrix going horribly wrong, but in a good way. But it's scarily truthful with how kids are now. Hell, I saw a 10 year old with a cell phone and an iPod today; she was texting on the phone and listening to her ipod, ignoring everything her mom was trying to say to her.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB_tyBcG7Dc

http://www.break.com/usercontent/2010/5/20/tech-addiction-1841180

Viral Tracking

After posting our video on Youtube, the first thing that came to our minds was to CONTACT our friends! The more people we can get to view it, the better. We hoped that we would be able to get are friends involved in order to spread the video online. To do this, we posted our video on Facebook, Friendster and Myspace in hopes for all our friends to view it. In the first few days, we only had 20 views, but suddenly on Wednesday, it sky rocketed to 67 views! Our video was being directed from facebook links, tags, and other blogs which made our video GO VIRAL! However, later in the week, the number of watches gradually decreased from about 10 views each day to about 3. In an effort to revitalize our video, we renewed our efforts to spread the video amongst our friends. This resulted in the doubling of daily viewers from Friday the 29th through Monday the 31st.

In the end our video achieved a total of 162 views

Comments: 2	Favorites: 0	Ratings: 1	Average Rating: 5.00

Origin of Viewers

Links followed to this Video	Views	% of total views
No link referrer (brown)	55	48.2
Youtube (other) (light blue)	27	23.7
Youtube search (dark blue)	17	14.9
External links (maroon)	14	12.3
Link from Youtube channel page (turqoise)	1	0.88

Views vs. Viralization

Date	Views	Attempt to Viralize
May 17th	18	Posted on youtube First embedded on - tcs2-group4-davisgoesviral.blogspot.com reposted on facebook First view on a channel page First referral from - tcs2-group4- 3
May 18th	28	Reposted on another facebook First referral from YouTube - /my_history\ First referral from YouTube search - high heels
May 19th	13	Posted on tumblr
May 20th	14
May 21st	6
May 22nd	5
May 23rd	4
May 24th\	3	TCS referral went up to 8 Facebook went from 11 to 18 views
May 25th	2
May 26th	4
May 27th	4
May 28th	0
May 29th	4
May 30th	13	Reposted by friends on tu mblr

FACEBOOK SKIT VIRALIZATION

We started off the viralization of the video through facebook posting and asking friends to viralize it as well. We then started using forums to post it. The tracking then showed us that we started off with few hits, and then it peaked during the weekend.

We tracked our video daily by checking the link once a day. We then collected the data after two weeks of the video posting. We graphed the results of the trends and where the high peak of hits was during the two weeks. As the graph shows, the weekend has the highest hits. However, we concluded that our video was not successful in viralizing in two weeks because we intentionally tried to viralize it.



To further prove this, Sameer, has made his own video for youtube, not INTENTIONALLY for viralization. However, he got more hits on it than our facebook skit video! This unintentional viral video was more successful than the facebook skit because of the quality and more effort put into the video. The viewers have to show some interest in a video before they want to share it with others, thus, that happened with the music video, but not the facebook skit. Another example is when the video was spammed on a forum, Sameer got banned from it. In conclusion, we believe that making a video to purposely get it viralized is harder than to have a video viralize itself spontaneously.

Blog 14: Who Owns The Media

Even before reading Reingold’s writing, I have noticed how cell phones have altered the social norms of my peers and myself. Once, now a very long time ago, when plans were made to meet for a movie, or go to lunch or anything in-between, we had to specifically state when and where we would meet. We were held to that, and anyone who did not show up was held responsible for themselves. Now-a-days, it is no longer a “Let’s meet at the old oak tree at 4pm,” but rather a “Call you when I’m nearly there.” In my own life this has lead to people becoming less punctual and less reliable. Something about having the ability to cancel (via phone) makes many people more likely to do so. In the past they would have shown up, because they gave their word and didn’t want to face the mockery if they ditched out. But now, a simple text relieves them of all that, and they are free to go as they please. Another issue phones have had in my life is the ever-present connection. I can always be reached. This puts stress on me because I hate disregarding someone’s phone call (even though some of my friends do it regularly). Even if I am busy, I try my best to answer when someone tries to reach me. This is both a good and bad thing. It has been awkward at times, forcing me to step outside to take a call. At other times, I do not get the peace and privacy I want, when I am always just 7 digits away.

Xtra Credit Blog 12 Viral Videos

Burgess emphasizes that the nature of viral videos is the opportunity for participation. The videos that become viral provide a set of rules under which other contributors may create their own videos; this active participation increases the value of the viral video within the public sphere. Drax works within a similar field of participation. Second Life is literally a second public sphere operating on the Internet; it is a virtual world in which people communicate via their Internet personas, or Avatars. Seinna Harris, an activist and Obama campaign supporter, used the site to set up a location within Second Life much like a campaign headquarters in real life (or I guess, First Life, haha), allowing other Obama supporters from all over the country to come together at one place, at this virtual campaign headquarters and discuss Obama's platform, and possibly other important political issues. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who used Second Life to hold a conference for discussing the international criminal court system, voiced his delight to Drax that geographical boundaries did not impose a limit on his conference; anyone with a Second Life avatar could attend the conference no matter where they were in the world. What Drax and Burgess share is this sense of international community, one that has existed for hundreds of years, but until recently, was limited by geographical space and transportation to geographical locations, much like how communication was once limited to transportation via ship, stagecoach or train before the invention of the telegraph. Internet sites like YouTube and Second Life provide a worldwide public space in which individuals and groups of individuals can debate, offer support for political and social movements, or participate in cultural and social phenomenon.

Blog 12- Video Vortex 2

Jean Burgess’s article in Video Vortex outlines the production, venue, spread, and viewing of viral videos. There are key components to the more popular viral videos that set them apart from the billions of others online. Attention grabbing tactics are typically used to reel in viewers and active viewer participation keeps them there. What makes web 2.0 so upgraded from the initial internet is that we are now more engaged in the material that we are watching. We not only watch it but we can create it, judge it, pass it on, or even mock it.

Bernhard Drax, a reporter on Second Life, creates non viral material on a viral website. His material does not strike me as something a random person would connect with. The videos does not reach out to everyone, or play on the tactics that enable for optimal viralization. Second Life as a whole on the other hand allows for people to contribute their ideas and creations to everyone in the community. Afterward, they are able to receive feedback and the participation cycle continues. The site itself is viral because it allows people to spread anything they feel people would like to see or be able to relate to. However, Drax’s videos are spreadable but not was further than his target demographic.

Viral Videos

Burgess talks about how viral videos create community. People interact through these videos, whether it be with a video response or with a comment. Burgess talks about the reproducibility of viral videos, and how each is sort of a sample or appropriation, just like music. Both of the videos that were mentioned were music. They were reproduced and there were spoofs of them, and this is what created a dialogue and a community with these videos, according to Burgess. Drax seemed to take a similar approach to the use of the internet. He also believed that it created a community. He thought it was a way for the community to become informed in a more accessible way. Both Drax and Burgess think that it is a way for people to become involved and to interact. The videos that Burgess wrote about and Drax's videos did elicit a different response from me. I thought Chocolate Rain was interesting and I would likely tell other people to watch it. But I wouldn't tell people to watch the Drax videos. The second life made me uncomfortable and it made me afraid that that is where we are all headed, only communicating through the internet, not just using it to laugh at funny videos.

blog 12: Viral Vids

In the Video Votex Burgess discusses how videos are distributed throughout the world by Youtube, Twitter, google and different applications in order to obtain attention. This creates interests which later creates an active form of community within society as they participate by commenting or engaging in discussions about that viral video.
Burnhard Drax, on Secondary Life does relate to this article. As he explains that Second Life is another way for the community to become alert, interact and get involve with real life issues around the world. Just as Burgess had explained that viral videos "attract active,participatory and creative engagement from other participants", Second Life can as well with a virtual, 3D like environment that has replicas of the world around us (Burgess 103). What Drax has said in his Virtual Gitmo, that it "covers activism in these virtual worlds how international communities interact with social issues" which does connect again with Burgess's argument.

Blog 12 - Viral Videos

Burgess described viral videos as being catchy and appealing to wide audiences, user generated, and spread through user participation.

Draxtor’s work can or cannot be interpreted as viral. It can be seen as viral because they are innovative and new. I can tell you that when watching “Obama in SL” report I was quite confused by the whole environment of Second Life. It was something that I was never exposed to and was unsure of what I had just watched. I didn’t believe SL was an actual service until I ended up Google’ing it. It is funny, because just as after realizing it was a real service, I quickly announced to my roommate’s “Guys do you know what Second Life was.” I think began to show them the footage of the Obama in SL and telling them how crazy it was that a virtual world really exists. So by looking at Draxtor’s work from this perspective, yes it would be considered viral.

However, it can also be looked at from another perspective. After watching one or two of his videos I am not interesting in watching anymore. The fan-base that would be watching Draxtor’s videos would be those who are actually playing Second Life on a daily basis. This is a very niche and small market. When looking at it from this perspective, his videos are uninteresting and have a low replay value for those who are not involved in Second Life. Therefore his videos are not viral.

To conclude, I believe that the GUI Second Life contains all the properties as Burgess described as viral. Draxtor’s work contains only some viral elements.

Blog 12 - Viral Videos

Jean Burgess' view viral videos and meme as being more of a cultural participation in social networks rather than marketing schemes with "messages" and or "products". I think Burgess' example of the "Guitar" is the perfect depiction of how a video not only goes viral, but that a culture is being formed in expressing self, rather than selling a message. Thus, the "value" in youtube social networks are being spread through participation in every form from imitation, competition, suggestions, etc. Ultimately, this value forms the basis of a culture on WEB 2.0. Burgess also argues that the success and retention of a viral video happens because of how the video allows for ongoing participation through transformation of the "original" video's main key signifiers.

Draxtor's work in virtual news reporting and active participation from players in second life (SL) can be seen as an example of Jean Burgess' definition of the purpose of viral videos. One of the reasons Draxtor's videos are viral is because of innovative perspective on reporting news in a virtual world. People that join the group to participate not only by viewing the news, but these viewers are allowing themselves to experience the news as if they were there! That is a significant and important signifier that makes Draxtor's work original and spreadable. It can be captured through the virtual participation through talks and visual experience that traditional news reporting doesn't allow. Traditional news is PASSIVE PASSIVE PASSIVE!

The cultural participation forming in this social network also further support the fact that the viral videos are not selling products or simply feeding viewers messages. Yes, the SL provide information, but it does so in a way that allows for opinions and participation in the news given. It is ACTIVE ACTIVE ACTIVE! Without that participation, Draxtor's work would be short-lived as well as just another "fad" that has come and gone without leaving a mark that transforms a culture, in this case, the culture of recieving news.

On the other hand, Draxtor's work can be argued as forming of a social group that conceive a "message" because of the specific subjects covered. Thus, providing the marketing's perspective viral videos. For example,Draxtor's news covering the Gauntanamo Prison and the viewers experiencing themselves as a prisoner has a strong one-sided story that Draxtor CHOOSE, thus, it also limits to what "messages" he wants to get across even if there are users participating in it. Because Draxtor is the ultimate creator and controller of second life, it doesn't mean participation is fully accesible in viewers/users hands! This is where it differs from Burgess' main points of viral videos, there is some unforeseen or subtle passiveness to Draxtor's work!

Blog 12: Viral Videos

Drax does nothing that is talked about by Burgess. He is neither reproducible, nor has textual hooks or anything else interesting enough to be viral. His video channel has a little more than 22,000 views. That is hardly viral and by the way Drax reports, he will probably never achieve much more than that. The problem with Drax is that he is a reporter for a niche market. Many people are excluded from his videos by only reporting on second life. Moreover, he’s boring. His videos are like watching the news, and not even an exciting news channel. They are about current events and so, lose meaning as time progresses. Burgess said that many of the viral videos need to have something appealing to a wide audience, such as being funny. There are no LOLcats, no catchy songs, or anything else that is in many of the viral videos. Burgess mostly talked about the reproducibility of a video lending it strength. That if more and more copies were made, it would grow in popularity. Every new addition would feed the fire that the video lived off of, and Drax does not seem to want this. I can’t blame him. If more Second Life news reporters were around, he might lose audience members. He stands to gain nothing from being reproducible.

Blog 12: Viral Videos

Burgess's article from "Video Vortex" argues that social networking sites are breeding grounds for ideas, epitomized by videos on youtube. These are carriers for the ideas that are then able to be acted upon on the sites, prompting iteration and expansion. More importantly, these ideas are passed merely virtual, and have real world implications. The work of Drax, from Second Life, also applies to this. He reaps the benefits of the infinitely large network, spreading his thoughts and reports to an audience that they might not have been able to reach before; all the while keeping his stories culturally relevant. This medium of viral spreading ties into the idea of the internet as a public sphere.

Going Viral- Albert/Roy/Teresa

Viral Video Log:

Monday 17th -0 views. Posted URL to Myspace and Facebook.
Tuesday 18th -262 views- Hosted on the site StumbleUpon
Wednesday 19th- 273views reposted on facebook
Thursday 20th- 287views hosted on Digg
Saturday Morning 22nd- 292 reposted on facebook
Sunday 23rd- 295 views- Spread on Omegle
Monday 24th- 301 views- posted on myspace
Tuesday 25th- 301 views- Reposted on facebook
Wednesday 26th 301 views

Over the course of this week and a half, my team’s viral video reached just over 300 people. This is far from ‘viral’ but never the less a sizeable sum. I actually did not expect to get more than 100 views on the video. It takes something very special, often unplanned and not creatable to make an internet hit. Unfortunatly, this video was not the special that was required for virality. The internet is hard to please, as one commenter (who was voted up 4 times) noted, “This looks like a small child got their hands on a copy of premier, or even windows movie maker, and then applied as many filters as they could to a video shot by someone with epilepsy. “
Regardless of video content (it was said that content is not necessarily important) we attempted to spread the video in as many ways as we could; telling people in class, friends and even family members to look at it and share it. However, it seems that it barely got any more views after the first set of viewers. From Monday to Tuesday of the first week, our view count jumped from 0 to 262, but in the following week, barely an extra 40 views were to be had.

Go Viral! With Tammy and Jeremy

PRESENTATION LINK

I know we are presenting June 3rd, but I was not sure if we would be allowed to submit our blogs after the date on smartsite. So I'm posting just in case!!

May 17, 2010
posted to YouTube
33 views
posted to my Facebook.

May 18, 2010
posted to Tumbler
Sent to 1 friend on Facebook
Sent to 3 friends on AIM
158 Views
1 reblog on tumblr
1 like on tumblr
5 likes on Youtube
2 comments on YouTube
4 likes on Facebook
2 comments on Facebook.

May 19, 2010
Repost on Facebook
1 like
2 comments

May 22, 2010
327 Views
6 likes on YouTube
3 comments on YouTube

May 26, 2010
419 Views; 7 likes on YouTube; 4 comments on YouTube; 3 Favorites
1 reblog on Tumblr; 1 like on Tumblr
6 likes on Facebook; 4 comments on Facebook





Summary
Jeremy and I posted our video at around 3:30 AM last week; we expected to get our first views by later in the morning or afternoon. We were wrong. Somehow someone on the internet found it and watched it within the first few minutes of its posting. From then we inundated our facebook profiles, tumblrs, and twitters with pleas and proclamations that our video was the funniest thing on YouTube ever. We pled and people answered. We have over 400 views and although some of them are friends of ours some are not. On tumblr, someone that I do not know from Germany liked the video. I thought that that was interesting because I did not expect it to get past Jeremy and my social circles.
The project was a little more complicated than I had expected because we wanted our video to really spread in the virtual world so we have to think about things that people would watch on YouTube. We interviewed some people asking them what they looked for in a good YouTube video. People typically wanted something they could

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What we decided after doing some light research was that viral videos are not intended to be viral, they just happen. It would be impossible to create an original work and hope for it to spread like fire. Instead, we examined another type of viral video that had evident prevalence across the tubes. The is compilation-based videos such as remix, remesh, mashups of already spread user-generated content. We selected many of our favorite viral videos and compiled them into one. To help tie it in, we created a familiar intro to them and had a conclusion that is similarly popular. The iPhone commercial introduction sequence could be classified as a hook, which many of our friends have noted that it is the best part. This was interesting because we had no idea that our content would end up being the interesting and most viewed part of our video (according to YouTube statistics). Thanks to url tracking services such as bit.ly, it was easy to stalk the exact moment and demographics of the clicks our video received. Below is a breakdown of the predominant age groups that viewed our video. It is clear that the predominant population is in our own age-group which is a logical extrapolation of the social circles that we ourselves shared the video with.

Viewership:

MALE	18-24	36.95%
FEMALE	18-24	34.10%
MALE	35-44	12.05%
MALE	25-34	9.32%
MALE	65-	2.94%
FEMALE	13-17	2.52%
FEMALE	25-34	2.08%