case
Another day, another story about some cheap, plastic Wii motion control accessory finding an application outside of gaming. In this case, it’s the balance board, and not only is this device helping stroke victims recover, it’s saving them money, too.
In fact, doctors at the University of Melbourne found that the balance board, normally used for pseudo Yoga or navigating Mii’s down a virtual ski slope, was so sensitive it could very well replace traditional laboratory-grade “force platforms” doctors use to assess a patient’s balance.
When doctors disassembled the board, they found the accelerometers and strain gauges to be of “excellent” quality. “I was shocked given the price: it was an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up,” said lead researcher Ross Clark, in an interview with New Scientist.
Even better, Clark’s team has already published a paper that verifies the Wii balance board is “clinically comparable” to the nearly $18,000 lab force platform. That’s great news for many smaller physio clinics that would otherwise be unable to afford the traditional rig. [New Scientist]
Ad-supported photo books
Need physical copies of some great shots, but you’re a bit too lazy to order and pay for them? HotPrints mails you free 16-page photo books, with shots pulled from Facebook, if you don’t mind some non-intrusive paper ads.
In this case, non-intrusive means the advertisements aren’t watermarked or otherwise touching your actual photos. They’re inserted between the pages, and can be pulled out, kind of like magazine subscription cards. You’d also have to be comfortable with HotPrints using “contextual” data from Facebook to target some ads at you. That means the album style you choose, the content of your profile, and region information from your Facebook account are used to target the ads, but the company claims that no identifying information is given out to its sponsoring partners. You can read more about HotPrints’ do’s and don’ts at their privacy policy.
If you’re cool with that at the cost of free, even free shipping, HotPrints’ Facebook app makes it fairly easy to pull in tagged photos of yourself or any Facebook contacts for a quickie album, with a limit of one per month. It’s a free service, requires a Facebook account (and app authorization) to use.
Two viral campaigns – one drove sales, the other probably didn’t
Samsung’s extreme sheep LED art video went viral and was definitely passed along as the bit.ly stats show below, but whether it drove sales for Samsung, or whether people even knew what it meant (Samsung makes LED lit LCD TVs), no one will really know.
Whereas JetBlue’s All-You-Can-Jet Pass also went viral (similar order of magnitude of shares, again by way of the bit.ly stats) and it led straight to the page about the All-You-Can-Jet Pass where users could then go on to buy it.
In the case of Samsung, the video was cool, entertaining, and unexpected and went viral. But the link to sales was tenuous at best. In the case of JetBlue, the product itself went viral and the link to sales was direct.
Hmm… which had a larger business impact? you tell me.
How NOT to design a web page
a great technique to use to see if your website design is too cluttered or busy is to shrink it down to a thumbnail (like below). You will quickly see that your eye is trying to find something to focus on in each case. If you can’t find the thing to focus on, then you need to go back and simplify the design. Only in rare and specific circumstances should your site deliberately have multiple points of focus. Even then, there should be a sequential order to what the user is led to see.
Contextual Ads Gone Wrong
the problem with contextual ads, is that they just match words. I’m wondering what words matched in this case?
How to manufacture a viral video sensation and make viral profits – Post 2 of 2
Related: The JKWeddingDance video was real; the viral effect was MANUFACTURED – Post 1 of 2
It was originally discovered and reported that while the jkwedding dance video was real, the viral effect was manufactured by Chris Brown and Sony’s marketing and public relations poeple.
Chris Brown and Sony PR made an unconventional, but really really good, decision to promote a home video on YouTube to drive massive increase in sales and also polish Chris Brown’s tarnished image in the process.
See ReadWriteWeb’s initial article — http://bit.ly/KA3HI
The video of JKWeddingDance was funny and it used Chris Brown’s “Forever” song. Instead of suing them and issuing a take-down order, Sony’s PR department promoted it instead and added an overlay ad to purchase the single from Amazon MP3 or iTunes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0
This case reads like a how-to guide to create a successful viral video that drives sales. They (Chris Brown) did everything right.
By promoting the video (instead of suing to get it taken down), they got the video past the first tipping point of X thousand views, after which the video remained on the front page of YouTube which gets about 30 million unique users in a day. Most people don’t look through the ocean of videos on YouTube. Instead, they start with the ones listed on the front page as “most popular, top favorited, or most viewed.”
Then real people continued to amplify the snowball effect — social amplification — and passed along to their friends. This added a viral halo on top of the original promoted views. The viral halo is low to no cost to the advertiser so any profits derived from it is pure viral profit.
For a step-by-step guide to creating a viral video, see
http://go-digital.net/blog/2009/08/how-to-make-a-viral-video-a-5-step-guide
Viral hits can be manufactured. A group which has done this successfully and reproducibly is ImprovEverywhere (see their YouTube channel below). They have MANY YouTube videos which have hundreds of thousands of views, and their latest hit — No Pants Subway Ride – achieved 8 million views in 3 months.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ImprovEverywhere
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).
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
“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.
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.
b) Twitturly shows only 3 thousand retweets on the YouTube URL itself
c) Delicious shows only 447 bookmarks of the video itself
d) Reddit only shows 673 thumbs up for the video itself
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).
– 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)
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…
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.
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).
10. Google only reports 366 links to the video and most of them are not even important websites (see Alexa blue bar)
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.
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.
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
What viral videos look like; what non-viral videos look like — by the stats
The first 2 are viral videos – notice the shape of the “total views curve” (quick rise and approaches the max asymptotically). The last 2 videos are not viral, and supported by paid advertising and promotion. It is a straight line that grows steadily over time. The 2 examples of non-viral videos were chosen simply to have similar view counts as the first and second examples.
Viral video examples – notice the asymptotic curve towards the max on the total views chart.
Frozen Grand Central ImprovEverywhere viral video – 18 million views – added on Jan 31, 2009. ”Other/viral” gave it its first big boost and embedded views gave it another big push.
No Pants Subway Ride ImprovEverywhere viral video – 9 million views – uploaded January 13, 2009; got onto YouTube homepage and got a major boost from it.
NON-viral video examples – notice the straight line of the total views chart.
Perfect example of NON-viral video that had help with paid media – in this case, GoDaddy supported these videos with costly Superbowl ads — which led to nice bumps-up in total views.
In the case of Smirnoff’s Tea Partay, it was not supported by paid media so it took longer to grow and the shape of the curve is a nice blend between the straight line of a non-viral video and the asymptotic line of a viral video.
Finally, blatant ads don’t go viral – Sony’s grand central product demo stunt. And even if they are discussed in dozens of blogs it is not enough to get past the first tipping point.
The generalization that TV ads are more “helpful” than internet ads is simply false and irresponsible
In the following study published by Harris Interactive and Adweek Media, they show a chart which seemingly shows that TV ads are “most helpful” in making a purchase decision. If you were give the following list of choices — TV ads, newspaper ads, search engine ads, radio ads, banner ads, and none — and asked to select which was most helpful to your purchase decision; which would you choose? And would you choose that because it was more familiar to you (e.g. TV), seen more frequently, etc. Or is it that banner ads are generally known to be ignored (eye tracking studies show that most users know not to look at the top and right sides of a web page, knowing that banner ads typcially go there).
Source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-ads-most-helpful-web-banners-most-ignored-9645/
More than one-third of Americans (37%) say that TV ads are most helpful to them in making a purchase decision, while nearly half say they ignore internet banner ads, according to (pdf) a poll from AdWeekMedia and Harris Interactive.
In terms of the helpfulness of ads in other media, newspapers rank second behind TV, with 17% reporting that newspaper ads are most helpful, while 14% say the same about internet search-engine ads:
At the other end of the spectrum, Radio ads (3%) and internet banner ads (1%) are not considered helpful by many people. The poll found also that more than one fourth (28%) of Americans say that none of these types of advertisements are helpful to them in the purchase-decision-making process.
Not surprisingly, the types of ads Americans find helpful vary by age and, slightly, by region:
- 50% of people ages 18-34 find TV ads most helpful.
- 31% of those ages 55+ say newspaper ads are most helpful.
- 40% of Southerners find TV ads most helpful, while only one-third (33%) of Midwesterners feel the same.
Banner Ads Most Ignored
Almost half of Americans (46%) say they ignore internet banner ads, according to the study. Much further down the list of ignored items are internet search engine ads (17% of people ignore), television ads (13%), radio ads (9%), and newspaper ads (6%):
One in ten Americans (9%) say they do not ignore any of these types of ads.
Age and regional differences:
- 50% of those ages 35-44 and 51% of Midwesterners say they ignore Internet banner ads compared with 43% of 18-34 year olds as well as Easterners and Southerners.
- 20% of Americans 18-34 years old (20%) say they ignore Internet search engine ads while 20% of those ages 55+ ignore TV ads.
Harris Interactive suggestes that these findings are important because, despite online video and the ability to use a DVR to shift live programming, TV ads remain most helpful to consumers. Conversely, while an internet strategy is essential for a comprehensive ad campaign, banner ads are only considered helpful by a few and are ignored the most, the polling fiirm said.
About the survey: The AdweekMedia/The Harris Poll was conducted online in the US from June 4-8, 2009 among 2,521 adults (ages 18+). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.
The hardest thing to do in web 2.0 …
is keep your audience, keep them interested, or provide enough value to them to get them to switch or get them to come back.
Case in point, Wolfram Alpha. In many ways it is superior (in a different way) than Google because it is a computational search engine — its results are focused on things that can be calculated — e.g. distance between NY and San Fran, etc.
Interest has waned (see search volume chart) and traffic has dropped (see Compete chart).
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