My Adventures in a week of Youtube Success
So last week, I made a video on YouTube. It’s called Walt Gives Hank the Wrong CD, and it’s re-edited version of a scene from the eleventh episode of the fifth season of Breaking Bad.
I made a post about this 12 hours after posting the video and I talked about how amazed I was how fast the views went up. Well, that kept going for the next day. Within 24 hours, I had made just under half a million views. It was surreal. The next day, I hit another 200,000 views. I was sure that I would hit a million within the week. That never happened. At the point of this post, its at around 830,000 hits. Now, that it a lot of views, but at the rate it was headed on the first day, I was sure it would skyrocket to a million in no time. It slowed right down after 3 days, and that was because the buzz had worn off. When I released it, that episode had just aired, and was still fresh in everybodys minds. Also, on YouTube’s front page, another version of the scene involving Miley Cyrus twerking was present at way over 1 million views. I think that a lot of the time when a meme-like video is released, people want to see other variations of it, and since I got in first, I was able to rake in the views.
A few really awesome things happened out of all this.
That is an article on the Daily Mail about the video. The fact that I made something that garnered enough attention that trashy news sites were willing to make articles about it is crazy. This all came at me in a single day and scared the bejeezus out of me.
Another great thing that happened is all the great comments that have been made on the video. Here are some highlights:
How the fuck do 75 people not like this?!?
FUCKING GENIUS
I sent this video to people that don’t even like me… now they love me.
I can’t stop watching this it’s so funny
this is why i love the internet
This has been flagged as spam hide • Not Spam
You’re fucking stupid….. I know the clip is edited in………. I didn’t recognize which episode the actual scene is from. Don’t be a little rude bitch next time…
Yeah, I spawned a few YouTube arguments, but for the most part, lots of praise.
Another great thing was that Betsy Brandt, the actress who plays Marie in Breaking Bad retweeted the video.
“@FairyRockmother: “@jakir_XII: @betsy_brandt@deanjnorris Walt gives Hank the Wrong CD, http://t.co/44VEkJDPEr” I LOVE this.
— Betsy Brandt (@betsy_brandt) August 28, 2013
A reason the views seem to be slowing is that YouTube has blocked viewers from watching the video on mobile devices. I read through my comments, and apparently its because YouTube don’t want people using videos with songs (like VEVO) as music players on their phones for free. Since my video uses Funky Town in the clip, it isn’t allowed to be used on mobile. This wasn’t always the case, it was only a few days ago that they stopped allowing it on mobiles, so maybe that has caused it to slow down. YouTube analytics give 18% of my viewers are mobile users, so I’ve potentially lost a 5th of my views.
Anyway, the point of this post is about the virality of my video. It surged for a day and slowed down very quickly. That is what a viral video is. Will my video hit a million? Yes, but in a couple of weeks probably. The great thing about this video is that I’ve gotten over 100 subscribers, which will be good when I start producing regular content for YouTube in the coming months.
EDIT: Had to add this comment to my personal favourites.
If there were golden keys to the internet like they have for cities, whoever made this should get one.