Commentary

A Million Views On YouTube -- And Other Lotto Wins

My online social graph is, I imagine, normal for someone in my industry. I count my Facebook friends and LinkedIn contacts in the hundreds, and my Twitter followers in the thousands. I’m a gregarious and extroverted networker. And yet there is a limit to how many active relationships I can maintain. I haven’t counted them, but, at a guess, I’m probably sitting somewhere close to the Dunbar number. And this, to me, is a paradox. How is it that, with all the social tools and technology available to me, I am still only able to maintain approximately 150 active relationships?

A similar phenomenon occurs with content and discovery. The beauty of Web 2.0 is that all the gatekeepers are gone. No longer do we have to get approval from an agent, an editor, a publisher or a broadcaster. No longer does someone have to deem us worthy before our video can become accessible to the public. The playing field has been leveled.

advertisement

advertisement

And the level playing field takes us right back to where we were: with would-be stars toiling in obscurity, with the likelihood of discovery or popularity near zero, and with the same megahit / long-tail structure that has always existed. All that has changed is the mechanism by which content makes it through the system.

There is only so much content we can process, and the more that gets made available to us, the more we rely on filter mechanisms that by their very nature are self-reinforcing. In a 2009 article from Slate, Chris Wilson tracked 10,000 YouTube videos randomly; only one received more than 100,000 views. And it’s a statistical certainty that the likelihood of achieving that level of popularity has plummeted as the volume of content has spiked. At the time Chris wrote the piece, 20 hours of video were being uploaded to YouTube’s servers every minute; nowadays, it’s more than 48 hours. Every minute.

To further complicate matters, we have the tension between fresh content and popular content. I want to see the video that everyone is talking about, but I also want to be one of the first to see the video that everyone will talk about. I want a discovery engine to help me discover, not just to point me to what has already been discovered by millions. But this, of course, is an impossibility. Any successful, automated system of discovery will quickly shift from the observer to the arbiter.

Google was designed to help figure out which sites were popular. Now it’s Google that makes sites popular. According to a 2010 paper, popularity on YouTube is hugely dependent on your video a) showing up prominently in search results and b) becoming a “related video” recommendation alongside another, popular video. The success of our YouTube clips follows a legacy system reminiscent of admissions to the Ivy League.

We are continually trying to escape from ourselves; we want democracy and freedom and equal access. But all equal access means is that you are competing with more people for attention.

I’ve often observed that, in order for a startup to be successful, you have to do everything right -- and you have to be lucky. It’s equally true for people trying to achieve YouTube popularity. You have to do everything right -- and you have to be really, really lucky, luckier all the time as the competitive noise around you builds exponentially.

There are no shortcuts. Unless, um, you know any? How would you go about getting your video seen?

3 comments about "A Million Views On YouTube -- And Other Lotto Wins".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. Walter Sabo from SABO media, October 28, 2011 at 11:09 a.m.

    There is no "lotto" effect when brands use HITVIEWS webstars. Your brand goes inside the show, not an annoying pre-roll. The results are predictive. The fastest way to get millions of views is by using stars who always get millions of views. HITVIEWS

  2. Jeff Edelman from The Student Center, Inc., October 28, 2011 at 11:23 a.m.

    It's nice to see somebody state clearly how difficult it is for a YouTube video to get lots of views. Most people seem to think it's easy. It's not only difficult, it is getting much more difficult everyday as more content pours online. Except for the most popular YouTube stars, most of which had the advantage of being there early, virtually every YouTuber's view counts per video have decreased dramatically. We were early to YouTube and at a time when we had fewer than one thousand subscribers, it was common for our videos to have over 100,000 views. Now we have almost 15,000 subscribers, but we'd be lucky to get 1000 views on a new video, even if we have a fairly popular YouTuber in the video itself. That's how dramatic the change is from a few years ago. It's rough out there!

  3. Donald Faller from double wide media, October 28, 2011 at 11:30 a.m.

    Just use known stars, invest in great scripts and production value. And then establish an advertising promo budget for the show. Sound familiiar?

    The only thing changing is the technology of distribution.

Next story loading loading..