Over the course of 2011, we at Trends have been tracking popular YouTube phenomenon each and every day. So now that YouTube has released its list of the year’s most-viewed videos, we went back to the archives to see how these clips became popular in the first place:
Want more 2011 nostalgia? Check out YouTube.com/Rewind and the timeline below to dive in to some of the unique and interesting stories that played out on YouTube this year:
From candidate ads to pundit debates, speeches from the White House to impassioned pleas from the American heartland, this year’s most-viewed political videos show us that a message that resonates can come from anywhere — and anyone.
Surpassing the President and various presidential hopefuls in views, the #1 video on our list comes from a young man in Iowa speaking candidly to his government. Zach Wahls’ 3 minute speech defending gay marriage has been viewed more than 18 million times.
Three candidates for 2012 made the most-viewed political videos list. Gov. Rick Perry’s highly-covered “Strong” ad was uploaded just this month, but has already racked up 7 million views (another one of his ads, “Proven Leadership” is also on the list). Herman Cain, who recently suspended his bid for President, showed that quirky gets views. President Obama reached an audience of millions on YouTube as both commander in chief, and stand up comedian.
Here’s the full list of the most-viewed political videos from the YouTube News and Politics category:
In all, the videos on this list account for over 50 million views, demonstrating that there is significant interest in political video on YouTube before the primaries have even begun. For all the key moments in online political video during the coming election, visit YouTube.com/Politics. For more of YouTube’s most-viewed videos of 2011, visit YouTube.com/Rewind.
This week we added 7 new countries to our Trends Dashboard and, not unlike many other countries, music videos are among the most-shared and most-viewed in many of those regions. Today we wanted to take a look at the African continent where we’ve now added viewing data in Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria.
Happy Birthday, YouTube Trends. Today marks the one-year anniversary of our launch and what better way to celebrate than to look at some of the trends behind the Trends.
In 2011, we featured over 2,000 Trending videos which went on to be seen over 5 billion times. Those videos were spread pretty evenly between all our categories with Music, Comedy, News, Sports, and Entertainment among the most popular.
And now it’s time for YouTube Trends most-viewed posts of ALL-TIME:
The internet took us by storm and changed the way we live our lives. Social media came along and had nearly the same type of impact. In business, it could be argued that social media is the biggest paradigm-shifting element that has come along in a decade, even more important than ecommerce.
Has the way that we use social media completely changed the way that we see and interact with advertising? We certainly hope so.
Advertising a business has always been about broadcasting a message to a wide-range of people. It’s always been about exposure, branding, and penetration. Today, thanks to social media, there’s a new element that was once very minor but that has taken center stage in nearly every level of advertising: sentiment.
Today, businesses can no longer advertise simply for the sake of getting out their message. It just doesn’t work as well. They have to take social media into account when crafting their message and the methods through which they’re able to broadcast it. Then, they have to be pro-active and conscious about the sentiment online to make sure that their message isn’t missing the point, striking the wrong cords, or touching the wrong nerves.
This was an absolute debacle and could be considered a case-study about how not to anger the social media masses. This was launched (and removed immediately) over 2 years ago. Imagine how it would have played today.
Keeping social media in mind from a business perspective is no longer a side-endeavor. It’s not something that businesses of any size can simply pawn off on the tech-savvy nephew of the accountant. It must be considered through every move, particularly advertising.
This infographic by our friends at MDG Advertising breaks down some of the things to consider when looking at social media and its effects on advertising. Click to enlarge.
When it comes to technological innovations heading into 2012, much focus is being put on mobile devices. Advancing the technology integrated into them as well as the various peripherals being added to them is highly lucrative and companies big and small are making pushes to be first to market.
Senseye is working on the cutting edge of such technologies. The four-man team of led by CEO Sune Alstrup Johansen is creating a way that mobile device users can interact with their handhelds by simply looking at the screen and various parts of it. Check out the video and imagine the possibilities of this technology:
