I wrote about Professor Wesch’s video Sunday night.
Today, a week after it’s been posted on YouTube, the video has been viewed more than 120,000 times (vs. 8,000 Sunday night).
This morning, Inside Higher Ed has the story behind this instant success in “A Lesson in Viral Video,” an article by Elia Powers published this morning.
So, how did Professor Wesch’s video become such a big hit?
He sent the link to 10 colleagues and friends. It was a second draft. He mostly wanted their feedback. And they responded positively by forwarding the link to a few of their friends. Within hours, the video had more than 100 hits on YouTube.“I was elated,†Wesch said. “By that time I was already satisfied that I generated a viral video.â€
Eventually, a popular blogger [Somewhat Frank] discovered the video and posted it onto his site, which helped send the hits into the thousands.
With the help of Technorati, Digg and other bloggers, the rest is history.
What would be interesting to find out is if this viral video success is going to result in positive outcomes for the academic programs (more applications?)
I saw it here first, Karine! And then added it to my very, very new (read: no content except what I steal from Karine and others) blog…
And then later, when I saw it on MSNBC’s Clicked, I was amazed at how quickly it made the rounds.
Thanks very much for alerting me to it…
I checked out the video after reading your post, Karine. First, it’s an amazing piece of work. Secondly, I found it linked to another blog that I read regularly, and within a half hour found it linked to yet another blog out of India. While we talk about quick communication in a global community, this was a prime example.
Web 2.0, Biodiversity and Viral Videos…
The video about Web 2.0 I posted a couple of days ago keeps on popping up on the blogs that I read. NUS…
It was sent to me by a student and I posted it to my course YouTube site. Though it’s about w2.0, I added it to my “typography” playlist. Collecting, tagging, organizing videos from places like YouTube & Google Video to use in a course is an interesting process in itself.
I wrote a short article (unfairly) comparing the Web 2.0 video to “The Undergraduate” Gators ad.
Be interested in what you think of it.
[…] Higher Ed examines this viral video hit (cheers to collegewebeditor), interviewing Michael Wesch about it. He makes an interesting point regarding how the video came […]