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Inside Google’s Secret Search Algorithm

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/zzkIcilnJp4/inside-googles-secret-search-algorithm

Wired’s Steven Levy takes us inside the “algorithm that rules the web“—Google’s search algorithm, of course—and if you use Google, it’s kind of a must-read. PageRank? That’s so 1997.

It’s known that Google constantly updates the algorithm, with 550 improvements this year—to deliver smarter results and weed out the crap—but there are a few major updates in its history that have significantly altered Google’s search, distilled in a helpful chart in the Wired piece. For instance, in 2001, they completely rewrote the algorithm; in 2003, they added local connectivity analysis; in 2005, results got personal; and most recently, they’ve added in real-time search for Twitter and blog posts.

The sum of everything Google’s worked on—the quest to understand what you mean, not what you say—can be boiled down to this:

This is the hard-won realization from inside the Google search engine, culled from the data generated by billions of searches: a rock is a rock. It’s also a stone, and it could be a boulder. Spell it “rokc” and it’s still a rock. But put “little” in front of it and it’s the capital of Arkansas. Which is not an ark. Unless Noah is around. “The holy grail of search is to understand what the user wants,” Singhal says. “Then you are not matching words; you are actually trying to match meaning.”

Oh, and by the way, you’re a guinea pig every time you search for something, if you hadn’t guessed as much already. Google engineer Patrick Riley tells Levy, “On most Google queries, you’re actually in multiple control or experimental groups simultaneously.” It lets them constantly experiment on a smaller scale—even if they’re only conducting a particular experiment on .001 percent of queries, that’s a lot of data.

Be sure to check out the whole piece, it’s ridiculously fascinating, and borders on self-knowledge, given how much we all use Google (sorry, Bing). [Wired, Sweet graphic by Wired's Mauricio Alejo]

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Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

"We Are Not Prepared"

Source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-02/washington-war-games-simulate-crippling-cyber-attack-us

Washington insiders recently sweated out a real-time war game where a cyberattack crippled cell phone service, Internet and even electrical grids across the U.S. The unscripted, dynamic simulation allowed former White House officials and the Bipartisan Policy Center to study the problems that might arise during a real cyberattack emergency, according to Aviation Week’s Ares Defense Blog.

The Policy Center’s vice-president reports “”The general consensus of the panel today was that we are not prepared to deal with these kinds of attacks.”

The nightmarish scenario that unfolded represented a worst-case example. As former secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff noted, many cyberattacks can be stopped if individual cell phone or Internet users simply follow the best practices and use the right tools. Similarly, another participant pointed out that private Internet companies would not sit idly by as a virus ran amok.

A collapse of power across the U.S. also only took place when the simulation brought in factors such as high demand during the summer, a hurricane that had damaged power supply lines, and coordinated bombings that accompanied the cyberattack and subsequent failure of the Internet.

Still, the war game highlighted crucial issues about the government’s own reliance upon communications that might go down during a real-life scenario. One of the biggest problems was how the President ought to respond to a situation that caused damage like warfare but lacked an immediately identifiable foreign adversary. Smaller-scale cyberattacks have already complicated real-world diplomacy, such as the alleged Chinese cyberattacks on Google and other U.S. companies.

Ares Defense Blog questioned a curious missing element from the simulation, in that there was no mention of what happened to phone or Internet service in the rest of the world. Surely a nation that decided to launch cyberattacks against the U.S. would take safeguards to protect its own crucial communication services, which would possibly help U.S. officials narrow down the list of suspects.

Another question seemed more mundane but equally important — how would the government activate the National Guard with cell phone service down?

The Pentagon’s DARPA science lab recently pushed for a “Cyber Genome Program” that could trace digital fingerprints to cyberattack culprits. But identifying whether a cyber attack came from individual civilians, shadowy hacker associations or government cyber-warriors has proven tricky in the meantime.

[via Ares Defense Blog]

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Friday, February 19th, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

Aardvark Publishes A Research Paper Offering Unprecedented Insights Into Social Search

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/IMDRrISRf-8/

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin published a paper[PDF] titled Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine, in which they outlined the core technology behind Google and the theory behind PageRank. Now, twelve years after that paper was published, the team behind social search engine Aardvark has drafted its own research paper that looks at the social side of search. Dubbed Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine, the paper has just been accepted to WWW2010, the same conference where the classic Google paper was published.

Aardvark will be posting the paper in its entirety on its official blog at 9 AM PST, and they gave us the chance to take a sneak peek at it. It’s an interesting read to say the least, outlining some of the fundamental principles that could turn Aardvark and other social search engines into powerful complements to Google and its ilk. The paper likens Aardvark to a ‘Village’ search model, where answers come from the people in your social network; Google is part of ‘Library’ search, where the answers lie in already-written texts. The paper is well worth reading in its entirety (and most of it is pretty accessible), but here are some key points:

  • On traditional search engines like Google, the ‘long-tail’ of information can be acquired with the use of very thorough crawlers. With Aardvark, a breadth of knowledge is totally reliant on how many knowledgeable users are on the service. This leads Aardvark to conclude that “the strategy for increasing the knowledge base of Aardvark crucially involves creating a good experience for users so that they remain active and are inclined to invite their friends”. This will likely be one of Aardvark’s greatest challenges.
  • Beyond asking you about the topics you’re most familiar with, Aardvark will actually look at your past blog posts, existing online profiles, and tweets to identify what topics you know about.
  • If you seem to know about a topic and your friends do too, the system assumes you’re more knowledgeable than if you were the only one in a group of friends to know about that topic.
  • Aardvark concludes that while the amount of trust users place in information on engines like Google is related to a source website’s authority, the amount they trust a source on Aardvark is based on intimacy, and how they’re connected to the person giving them information
  • Some parts of the search process are actually easier for Aardvark’s technology than they are for traditional search engines. On Google, when you type in a query, the engine has to pair you up with exact websites that hold the answer to your query. On Aardvark, it only has to pair you with a person who knows about the topic — it doesn’t have to worry about actually finding the answer, and can be more flexible with how the query is worded.
  • As of October 2009, Aardvark had 90,361 users, of whom 55.9% had created content (asked or answered a question). The site’s average query volume was 3,167.2 questions per day, with the median active user asking 3.1 questions per month. Interestingly, mobile users are more active than desktop users. The Aardvark team attributes this to users wanting quick, short answers on their phones without having to dig for anything. They also think people are more used to using more natural language patterns on their phones.
  • The average query length was 18.6 words (median of 13) versus 2.2-2.9 words on a standard search engine.  Some of this difference comes from the more natural language people use (with words like “a”, “the”, and “if”).  It’s also because people tend to add more context to their queries, with the knowledge that it will be read by a human and will likely lead to a better answer.
  • 98.1% of questions asked on Aardvark were unique, compared with between 57 and 63% on traditional search engines.
  • 87.7% of questions submitted were answered, and nearly 60% of them were answered within 10 minutes.  The median answering time was 6 minutes and 37 seconds, with the average question receiving two answers.  70.4% of answers were deemed to be ‘good’, with 14.1% as ‘OK’ and 15.5% were rated as bad.
  • 86.7% of Aardvark users had been asked by Aardvark to answer a question, of whom 70% actually looked at the question and 38% could answer.  50% of all members had answered a question (including 75% of all users who had ever actually interacted with the site), though 20% of users accounted for 85% of answers.
Information provided by CrunchBase


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Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

Why Job Seekers Should Worry About Their Online Reputation

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/online-reputation-important-for-jobs/12582/

If you are looking for a job or are a potential job-seeker, be very careful of what you write or share online because HR departments and recruitment professionals are scanning tweets, blog posts, photos, and other online profiles of job candidates before offering them positions.

Why Online Reputation Management is Important

Around 70% of hiring managers in in US have rejected candidate just because of their online reputation. The chart looks at the various types of online information that have led companies to reject candidates.

Why Companies Reject Candidates

Tomorrow is Data Privacy Day and this research (download PPT) was originally commissioned by Microsoft as part of the same initiative.

Other than Microsoft, Google, Intel, AT&T are also part of the Data Privacy Day group. You should also check their site as it contains some excellent resources on how companies, students and parents can better protect their online information.

Why Job Seekers Should Worry About Their Online Reputation

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Facebook    Twitter    Technology Blog

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Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

Net Promoter Score (NPS) – A Metrics “Sacred Cow” That Should be Slaughtered?

My main issues with the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is that it doesn’t tell me anything new, is based on flawed math, the number cannot stand alone, and is not actionable (does not tell marketers what to go do).

Read More about Net Promoter Score Challenges

Thanks for all the retweets!

ZebraBites@adamferrier Another one for the NPS collection; http://www.clickz.com/3635696 (via @jhenning and @acfou)

acfouIt’s an “it is what it is” metric (which isn’t actionable) – #netpromoterscore #netpromoter #NPS - http://bit.ly/6EYyc

spiralsThought provoking Net Promoter article http://www.clickz.com/3635696 -Good idea to use search as an indicator of customer satisfaction

VirtualMRRT @berniemalinoff: RT @JHenning @acfou: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is synonymous with “useless” http://tr.im/Fgv3

seangibRT @glenngabe: What’s Wrong With the Net Promoter Score http://bit.ly/84Jh2P via @acfou on ClickZ – some interesting comments as usual w …

glenngabeWhat’s Wrong With the Net Promoter Score http://bit.ly/84Jh2P via @acfou on ClickZ – some interesting comments as usual w/Dr. Fou. :)

MetriclyWhat’s Wrong With the Net Promoter Score - http://bit.ly/8U3VVD

christinet6dOh snap… RT @lizapost What’s the value of the Net Promoter score? According to @acfou, not much. ‘http://bit.ly/6EYyc

lizapostWhat’s the value of the Net Promoter score? According to @acfou, not much. ‘What’s Wrong With the Net Promoter Score’http://bit.ly/6EYyc

berniemalinoffRT @JHenning @acfou: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is synonymous with “useless” http://tr.im/Fgv3 || healthy debate pros/cons of #NPS

contactjrFrom @acfou: What’s wrong with the Net Promoter Score? http://bit.ly/17ahJC

Noakesi@holycow RT @jonnylongden: RT @rj_berg: Great article on some of the problems with Net Promoter Score (NPS) http://bit.ly/2h5jot#measure

acfouNet Promoter Score (NPS) like brand sentiment scores are oversimplified averages that are not actionable - http://bit.ly/6EYyc

ju2ltdRT @jonnylongden: RT @rj_berg: Great article on some of the problems with Net Promoter Score (NPS) http://bit.ly/2h5jot #measure

jonnylongdenRT @rj_berg: Great article on some of the problems with Net Promoter Score (NPS) http://bit.ly/2h5jot #measure #retail – why use this?

Adtraction_RAJ_What’s Wrong With the Net Promoter Score http://bit.ly/17ahJC (mmm)

KarmaMediaLabs#NetPromoterScore not all it’s cracked up to be? Decide for yourself: http://bit.ly/17ahJC

EricheadRT @rj_berg: Great article on some of the problems with Net Promoter Score (NPS) http://bit.ly/2h5jot #measure #retail – why use this?

PeteHealyNet Promoter Score = useless; replace w/ search volume. Augustine Fou @acfou http://www.clickz.com/3635696 Your thoughts? #in

helena_chariRT @mrnews: #NPS ‘tells you the obvious, isn’t predictive, doesn’t answer the “So what?” question.’ http://bit.ly/1DqmgD (via @DavidPenn

makingcjcAn it is what it is” metric…debate on the Net Promoter score. http://www.clickz.com/3635696

DannyGavinRT @EstherSteinfeld Interesting read: “What’s Wrong with the Net Promoter Score?” @acfou says, “So many things.”http://bit.ly/1ojkfk

ZaliciousRT @kevinertell: This is an excellent article on ClickZ: What’s Wrong With the Net Promoter Score http://www.clickz.com/3635696

hellosmalldogArticle about NPS is interesting – thanks to @mjayliebs for CCing us! We’re reading it now. (via @acfou, @wimrampen)http://tr.im/Fgv3

bigmacherRT @kevinertell: This is an excellent article on ClickZ: What’s Wrong With the Net Promoter Score http://www.clickz.com/3635696

DavashRT @rj_berg: Gr8 article: problems w/Net Promoter Score (#NPS) (http://bit.ly/2h5jot ) #measure [A grad of stats 101 could see all of this]

BobbleHeadGuruRT @rj_berg: Gr8 article: problems w/Net Promoter Score (#NPS) (http://bit.ly/2h5jot ) #measure [A grad of stats 101 could see all of this]

EstherSteinfeldInteresting read: “What’s Wrong with the Net Promoter Score?” @acfou says, “So many things.” http://bit.ly/1ojkfk

kevinertellThis is an excellent article on ClickZ: What’s Wrong With the Net Promoter Score http://www.clickz.com/3635696

rj_bergGreat article on some of the problems with Net Promoter Score (NPS) http://bit.ly/2h5jot #measure #retail

mjayliebsRT @wimrampen: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is synonymous with “useless” http://tr.im/Fgv3 (cc @hellosmalldog)

jestodcWhat’s Wrong With the Net Promoter Score http://www.clickz.com/3635696

jonathanmendez“NPS is what I call an “it is what it is” metric — it tells you the obvious” http://bit.ly/6EYyc

mrnews#NPS ‘tells you the obvious, isn’t predictive, doesn’t answer the “So what?” question.’ http://bit.ly/1DqmgD (via @DavidPenn1@jhenning)

DavidPenn1RT @jhenning RT @acfou: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is synonymous with “useless” http://tr.im/Fgv3 Maybe we need to take it less literally?

wimrampenRT @JHenning: RT @acfou: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is synonymous with “useless” http://tr.im/Fgv3

NicoPeruzziPhDRT @JHenning: RT @acfou: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is synonymous with “useless” http://tr.im/Fgv3 – the emperor has no clothes…

JHenningRT @acfou: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is synonymous with “useless” http://tr.im/Fgv3 Builds on my criticisms with some of his own.

acfouNet Promoter Score (NPS) is synonymous with “useless” (is based on bad math, is not actionable) – what say you? http://bit.ly/6EYyc

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Friday, November 20th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Twitter Stats

source: http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/

Summary

Over the past few months, Twitter has experienced explosive growth, attracting celebrity users such as Oprah, and a growing mountain of media and blog coverage. Sysomos Inc., one of the world’s leading social media analytics companies, conducted an extensive study to document Twitter’s growth and how people are using it. After analyzing information disclosed on 11.5 million Twitters accounts, we discovered that:

  • 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009
  • 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
  • 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
  • 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people
  • 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity (see the report on analysis of top-5% users)
  • New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over the first five months of 2009
  • More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
  • There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
  • Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.

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Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Contextual Help Bubble – Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia, Amazon, Google Translate, Clip2Send

Dead simple, handy tool for adding contextual help to any web page or entire site. It is installed on this blog — so go ahead and select something with your mouse.

Install on any webpage or blog by way of 1 line of code:

<script src=”http://64.202.162.213/bubble/bubble.js“></script>

Select any text, contextual bubble appears, click Wikipedia to get more information about the selected text

contextual-bubble-wikipedia-1contextual-bubble-wikipedia-2

When more than 5 words are selected, other options are grayed out and clip2send is the link to click to send the selected part of the page via email. Type in the email address; the subject line is autofilled, but editable; the source URL is automatically cited>

contextual-bubble-clip2send-1contextual-bubble-clip2send-2

Select text, contextual bubble appears, click Amazon link to bring up results on Amazon.

contextual-bubble-amazon-1contextual-bubble-amazon-2

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Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Two perfectly executed viral marketing programs in the SAME day – #bestbuy #jetblue #all-you-can-jet

Perfectly executed viral marketing program – BestBuy Samsung HDTV pricing “mistake”: 2 million google search results and 361k+ blog results in about 12 hours – ZERO COST.

2-million-google-results-bestbuy-samsung-hdtv

google-blog-search-bestbuy-samsung

google-trends-bestbuy-999-hdtv

#jetblue #all-you-can-jet

31 million search results and about 10 million blog posts in 7 hours

jetblue-all-you-can-jet-search-results

jetblue-all-you-can-jet-blog-results

google-trends-jetblue-all-you-can-jet

original @Jetblue tweet that started it all

jetblue-tweet-all-you-can-jet

Related:

http://industry.bnet.com/media/10003678/jetblues-all-you-can-jet-promo-shows-power-and-peril-of-free-media-channels/

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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments

Samsung 52 inch HDTV $9.99 at BestBuy – purchase receipt below (6:21a eastern time August 12, 2009)

Buy Link at the bottom of the post

best-buy-hdtv-receipt

Click for product page: Samsung – 52″ Class / 1080p / 120Hz / LCD HDTV LN52A650 SKU: 8749287

product-page-samsung-hdtv-pricing-mistake

Order is still good as of 12:23 pm EST August 12, 2009.

bestbuy-order-details-still-good

BestBuy knows digital and social media. CMO Barry Judge tells it like it is.

Related:

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending/archive/2009/08/12/customers-irate-about-10-hdtv-ad.aspx

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8311580&page=1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081202660.html

http://adage.com/article?article_id=138469

http://www.nbcwashington.com/around-town/shopping/Best-Buy-Bummer-999-HDTVs-an-Error-53043522.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=6697

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/13/bestbuy.mistake/index.html

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/081209_best_buy_offers_999_hdtv_by_mistake

http://industry.bnet.com/media/10003678/jetblues-all-you-can-jet-promo-shows-power-and-peril-of-free-media-channels/

http://www.kktv.com/home/headlines/53067682.html

http://www.wftv.com/countybycounty/20371068/detail.html

http://www.shoppingblog.com/blog/8120912

http://www.cepro.com/article/best_buy_accidentally_lists_1700_hdtv_for_10/

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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments

The JKWeddingDance video was real; the viral effect was MANUFACTURED – Post 1 of 2

originally investigated and reported on Friday July 31, 2009 by Augustine Fou, with Tugce Esener @tesener

Several friends and colleagues had the same reaction when they found out about this video — that it was at such a high view count already and we were late to the party of finding out.  Then we did some more digging — digital forensics  :-)  And this is a case where a viral hit was indeed successfully manufactured.  There’s something to be learned from all this – how to successfully manufacture a viral video sensation and make viral profits.

Related: How to manufacture a viral video sensation and make viral profits – Post 2 of 2

Chris Brown is successfully tapping into the viral halo of a funny video that coincidentally used his song.

ReadWriteWeb article on how rights owners (Sony, Chris Brown) can make viral profits on other people using their work instead of suing them - http://bit.ly/KA3HI

The video was real. But promotional activities (possibly/likely paid) created the initial viral effect (led to the tipping point of the viral effect) which then got carried a further by people thinking they were simply late to the party, including myself (e.g. 440k bit.ly clicks and 3k detectable retweets out of the 13M views). The numbers don’t jive.

The viral halo has added 1 million more views to the video from August 1 – August 2.  (13.1 M to 14.5 M)


Ten ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN proof points to follow, each with screen shot to illustrate.

1a. anyone notice that the “Forever” soundtrack is remarkably consistent throughout the video as if it were dubbed or added in after the original footage was shot. The sound is too consistent in volume and loudness to have come from a built-in, on-camera microphone. At the very end of the video, once it cuts back to the couple at the altar the sound quality goes back to the echo-y, tinny sound of an on-camera mic.

1b. The “TheKHeinz” user on YouTube was registered on July 19, 2009, the day the video was posted. We usually look for clues like this to detect “plants” by PR agencies.  This is an issue of trust — a user “CmdrTaco” on Slashdot has been around the forums for years, made hundreds of posts, and was rated by the community very highly. PR agencies trying to seed stories have to create new user accounts during the PR campaign (recent registration date) and have made no other posts or uploads before (no history).

thekheinz-user-info-on-youtube

2. The social intensity detected in all of the top social venues like Technorai, Delicious, Reddit, Digg, etc. indicate there was not enough organic sharing to support a view count of 13 million views in 11 days (updated: 14.6 million today August 2, 2009).

a) Bit.ly shows only 447k clicks on the shortened URL

bitly-statistics-on-jkwedding-video

“At Fortune’s Brainstorm:Tech conference Ashton Kutcher effectively took credit for boosting the views from – in his words – 12,500 views before he tweeted the link – to some 1.2 million views 12 hours later…”

Well, unfortunately he used a bit.ly link which provides public analytics on how many people clicked. Most tweets result in immediate traffic, which then tails off immediately after the tweet falls off the first page. In his case, look at the following bit.ly stats URL and click “past month” to see the peak clicks on July 23. All he can actually claim is that his tweet drove a peak of about 100,000 clicks on that day not 1.2 million :-(

http://bit.ly/info/Z7vMw

too bad Ashton. next time you make a BMOC claim, be sure to use a non trackable method, so analytics won’t “out” you so easily.

august-21-bitly-intensity-update

after only 3.5 days of retweets the twitter intensity died off to next-to-nothing; if this were a truly viral video, carried forth by real people (and not by paid PR support and paid media) the retweet intensity would remain high. As of August 21, there are over 21M views on the video and the 505k retweets does not show actual organic support for that number.

ashton-kutcher-promote-viral-video


b) Twitturly shows only 3 thousand retweets on the YouTube URL itself

updated-twitturly-stats-for-video

c) Delicious shows only 447 bookmarks of the video itself

delicious-bookmarks-jkwedding

delicious-bookmarks-jkweddingdance

d) Reddit only shows 673 thumbs up for the video itself

reddit-results-for-jkweddingvideo

e) Technorati shows only 277 blog mentions of the video itself — this could be undercounting if blogs used URL shorteners. But if you look at the blog intensity results (below) sorted by blogs with most authority the blogs have very little authority (i.e. influence or size of audience).

technorati-blog-posts-on-jkwedding

– these are real indications of interest by real people. The social intensity of the passalong for this video does not substantiate the huge number of views in 11 days.

What we are seeing now is the additional viral halo, as the momentum is sustained by large media outlets reporting on the story — even Google Blog blogged about it (boasting about the success of YouTube advertising in driving revenues). Of course TechCrunch is right that viral videos can be monetized: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/30/youtube-viral-wedding-videos-are-great-for-advertising/ )


3. Twitter shows nothing in the top “trending topics” related to this video – indicating few people are actually tweeting about it — if this video is SO viral (13M views in 11 days) then it has GOT to show up on a scan of social intensity. (see screen capture below)

July 31 (Friday)                 August 2 (Sunday)

twitter-trending-topics-455pm-july-31-2009August-2-trending-twitter-topics

4. The original video was posted July 19, 2009. The people from the video appeared on NBC’s Today Show and danced around Rockerfeller Center on July 25th (6 calendar days after posting). Today Show staff may be great at spotting news, but to get all the wedding party from the wedding to re-enact the dance on the Today Show in 6 calendar days — too good to be true?  Hmm…

today-show-appearance


5. Out of all the wedding videos on YouTube, how did Chris Brown detect this particular one that used his song. @glenngabe noted that there are song detection mechanisms  - ContentID - which detect the pattern of the copyrighted song and report that to the rights owners. We know there are hundreds, if not thousaands, or really funny wedding home videos — America’s Funniest Videos has been running for years and years on TV showing funny wedding blooper videos that people submitted to them.


6. ALL TEN of the top viral videos on AdAge’s Viral Video Chart took around 3 – 6 months to achieve full viral effect — not 6 days.  See all 10 videos’ stats, as reported by YouTube at the following link. This video has not shown up at all on the list of Adage viral videos.

AdAge Top Viral Videos all take 3 – 6 months to reach full viral effect



7. From @RedW0rm – YouTube Declares Wedding Video a Financial Success http://bit.ly/9ZUtu


8. also check the velocity of this http://twitter.com/#search?q=jkwedding or this http://twitter.com/#search?q=jkweddingdance notice the tweets are not seconds apart but hours apart. Something that achieved 13M views in the 11 days since posting would show far higher velocity or twitter intensity.

twitter-1-jkwedding

twitter-1-jkwedding

9.  For a top-trending topic on twitter, there is usually correspondingly high search volume that is detectable.  At first glance, terms related to this viral video like “jkwedding” or “jk wedding dance” all seem to spike.  But if you put it against even “Corazon Aquino” (one of the top trending topics NOW on Twitter) those JK wedding search volumes are dwarfed.  (see chart below).

corazon-aquino-search-volume

10.  Google only reports 366 links to the video and most of them are not even important websites (see Alexa blue bar)

google-in-links-for-jkwedding-video

11.  The video itself has no honors and no stats (yet); YouTube stats are conveniently turned off. Other videos have their stats graphs publicly available.

no-honors-for-jk-wedding-video

12. see the fine print in the YouTube description — For more information or to make a donation towards violence prevention please visit our website: http://www.jkweddingdance.com/ – why would a normal wedding video ask people to make a donation towards violence prevention? (see screen capture below), the WHOIS record shows the domain jkweddingdance.com was created 29-Jul-09 — today is 31-Jul-09

Updated: This was circumstantial evidence. A source confirmed that Jill is studying patterns of violence propagation for her PhD. Their choice of charity was their own choice. And the site was set up to help that cause.

violence-prevention-chris-brown

whois-jkweddingdance-part1

whois-jkweddingdance-part2

Conclusion?  The video itself is real, made by those nice people in the wedding. They may not even realize why or how their wedding video went viral (and the tens of thousands of other wedding videos on YouTube did not). On the Today Show, “The couple told Lauer they were surprised at the video’s popularity” (also see NY Daily News article – http://bit.ly/OA3iG )

Related articles:

ReadWriteWeb – Build Profit Not DMCA Suits

WSJ – YouTube Declares Wedding Video a Financial Success

PSFK – Co-opting Viral Hits to Sell More Music

TechCrunch – YouTube: Viral Wedding Videos Are Great For Advertising

Huffington Post – Viral Wedding on YouTube Drives Buyers to Chris Brown Music

ClickZ – http://blog.clickz.com/090805-160921.html

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Friday, July 31st, 2009 Uncategorized 37 Comments