We just created a new viral video. It is up on our website in addition to Google and YouTube. Here is the URL: http://www.webhostingusers.com/contents/c80000/96/49/view/Server-Room-Video Check it out and let me know what you think. It will be interesting to see how many views it gets over time and how many link backs we get as well.
I will post some progress messages over time here and hopefully will learn some good pointers to pass on as well. Anyone with pointers to give, they will be appreciated. The video has been up for 2 weeks now and has been viewed 117 times on YouTube. It has been favorited once on YouTube. It has been viewed 11 times on Google video. I also added it to Yahoo video and it has been viewed 24 times there. It has been Dugg once. If you view the video, I would be interested in suggestions for sequels. You can view the video here: http://www.webhostingusers.com/contents/c80000/96/49/view/Server-Room-Video
I wanted to post another update here and share a cool feature of youtube that I found out about as well. So, for an update on the stats here are the number of views for the video on each website. Please note that YouTube is expected to always have the most views since I have embedded it on my website. YouTube: 275 Views Google: 14 Views Yahoo: 56 Views LiveVideo: 15 Views A cool feature of YouTube is that it shows you the other sites that are either linking or embedding your video on their site. It also shows how many clicks your video has received from each of the sites that link to it. In addition to the search engines, this is a really great way to see if your video is really going viral or not. Another nice feature of this is that if you embed the video on your site, it will show you how many of the total views are coming from your website. That is a nice way to also tell if your video is going viral or not. We are still learning here. I hope this is helpful to others. We are also looking for other tips that we can use to improve the reach of this video.
Here is another update. We are slowly posting to other video sites. This may make it a little hard to see which sites perform best for some videos. This is not really the case here, but my suggestion is to spend the time posting to the top video sites at the same time. Also, we are experimenting with the name a little to see if that helps. So, instead of "The Server Room", we have posted a couple as "Bad Web Hosting". Here are the stats so far: YouTube (posted May 19, 2007) : 370 Views, 1 rating, 2 comments, favorited 4 times, 5 links with 77 views from those external links Google (posted May 19, 2007): 15 Views, 1 rating Yahoo: (posted May 21, 2007): 70 Views, 1 rating LiveVideo (posted June 4, 2007): 18 Views, 1 subscriber MetaCafe (posted July 9, 2007): 165 Views, many ratings but can't tell how many. Uncut.AOL.com (posted July 11, 2007): 23 Views Here are a few comments on these stats: YouTube is clearly ahead of all the others, with the possible exception of MetaCafe, which time will tell. With MetaCafe you can signup for their producer awards (after you read all the fine print about their ability to modify your work, distribute it as they see fit, etc.). I think this causes many more people to view your video. In 5 days, it has been viewed 165 times. Also, it seems that more people who view your video on MetaCafe actually take the time to rate it, unlike on the other sites. Also, the uncut.aol.com site is labeled as Beta and I can see why. They really need to fix their search engine. If I search by the title of the video, it is NOT found! If I search by any tags it is NOT found! I have to click on My Videos to find it. And if it is that hard for me to find it...how will anyone else! I hope this helps others. More to come as we continue this adventure.
i only managed to watch it half way. kinda boring, and really slow going. only 300 views is pretty poor after a month. make another clip. shorter.
jumpinjack, I agree. I think about a minute is probably the optimal length. 4 minutes - something a kingofoverkill would do. Any suggestions for a sequel?