What's with the super-popular youtube videos that are just slideshows??

[superboyac]

What's with the youtube videos that have millions of views but all they are are crappy animal slideshow?  I don't get it.  Usually, it's a stunning picture of a scene like "ZEBRA KILLS LION" (I won't post it because it's so stupid) but when you click on it, it's just a dumb slideshow.  Yet it has millions of views, and because of that, you're curious (when you see the thumbnail there on the side).  What's the story behind all of these?  There has to be something weird going on...has someone made a lot of money doing this?  It's gotta be something like that...it's way too stupid and successful for it to be an accident.

[barney]

Yet it has millions of views, and because of that, you're curious ...

-superboyac (January 04, 2012, 09:10 AM)

Back when the WWW was still a babe in arms, there was some college kid who had a Web site, pretty plebeian, mostly about cars.  However, his search terms included pornographic items.  A lot of people hit that site:  "Oh, boy, nekkid pitchers!"  The more people that hit the site, the higher it got in the rankings.  The kid didn't have any porn on his site, but he had a pretty good grasp of crowd psychology - and a very high site rank  ..

This is the same thing.  There's some putative reward for a massive number of views, so someone puts up a video - ?!? - adds a titillating title, and starts getting hits.  Then someone else - superboyac  ? - comes along, sees the hit count, and has to look.  So the view count gets higher, and more folk have to see why it's so high - an upward spiral.

Call it crowd psychology, basic marketing, ..., whatever label you put on it, it works.  And it's all the more mysterious/frustrating when you have no idea what reward the publisher might attain.

[superboyac]

It's true what you say...I get it.  But is there really money in it?  I'll do one or two if that's the case.  I know what people like...

[barney]

Maybe not money, directly ... that's part of the frustration ... you have no idea why I do what I do  .  Could be doing it for traffic - not the specific one you mentioned, perhaps, but some of the others do - to some Web site, garner valuta from the traffic.  Could be doing it to acquire a mailing list -IM rule of thumb is that you make a buck per month per person on your mailing list.  Could be doing it just to win a bet with a friend, or to get bragging rights in some group.  Or, could be personal satisfaction, something like, "Hell, I can do better than that!"

Yes, there is money in it, but it's a lot of work, as well  .  For instance, when I had a list, middle five (5) digits strong, I was making, seemingly, beau coup coin.  But I was also working sixteen (16) and eighteen (18) hour days, seven (7) days a week.  When I finally got around to doing the math, I wasn't even averaging annual minimum wage  .  And you need a pretty good plan ahead of time, a strategy on just how you'll make money.

So, yeah, the money's there.  But you need to have a plan on how you'll get it, a workable implementation.  Also, luck and timing figure into the equation.  Back in January of 2009, you could have sold a lot of Obama dolls in the US  - not so many now  .

So, yeah, but it ain't, not, never gonna be casual money.

[superboyac]

interesting barney.  so many meaningless numbers out there now.  we've really become about quantity and not quality.  47 million views for a slideshow?  Nobody likes it, nobody cares, yet there it is...an impressive number I suppose, but what does it mean?  It's like bebop jazz...sure, it's impressive to play an ionian mode over a diminished chord or something, but who gives a shit?  And it sounds like crap, to boot.  (sorry if I offended any jazz heads, I am one!)  Maybe that's my new slogan: quality of knowledge, not quantity.

[barney]

Maybe that's my new slogan: quality of knowledge, not quantity.

-superboyac (January 04, 2012, 02:57 PM)

Good luck  . 

One (1) of the problems you'll encounter will be those who judge the quality.  Using your jazz example, jazz is a class, thus has no quality, per se.  Bebop, as a member of the jazz class, can be judged on quality, but it is always a relative judgment.  Personally, I'm partial to slow jazz - blue jazz? - but a bebop aficionado prolly wouldn't even consider what I like jazz.  Have a friend who's into rap.  He'll admit it fits the class description for jazz, but doesn't consider the introspective stuff I prefer to fit that class.

Any quality judgment is going to be crowd sourced (whatever that is  ), so you may be spitting against the wind if the crowd does not appreciate your belief of the quality of some thing.  If the majority thinks it's not quality, it's not quality.  Until, that is, subsequent events show that it was, after all, quality.  But it's the immediate judgment that will hold sway, even as that judgment is being reversed.

It's a Catch 22 situation:  ya can't win, and ya can't quit  .

[techidave]

I am not a big Youtube fan but over the weekend I was on there and noticed the slideshow movies.  I thought "whats with this", I mean I don't want to look at the same slide for 20 seconds before it changes.  I expect to see a video.

Maybe these are newbies trying to break into the world of Youtube??   

[Deozaan]

Most of them I've seen are "music videos." That is, somebody wanted to put a song on YouTube but didn't have a video to go with it, so they made a slideshow that may or may not be related to the song/band so that you wouldn't be staring at a blank screen the entire time.

[tranglos]

47 million views for a slideshow?  Nobody likes it, nobody cares, yet there it is...

-superboyac (January 04, 2012, 02:57 PM)

I know what you mean. Of course YouTube (i.e., Google) could easily rectify that by doing one of the following:
- show the view count only to the uploader of the video
- not show the view count together with video thumbnails (show it only on the video page proper, after you've clicked through)
- show both the view count and the like/dislike counts with video thumbnails. You'd see the impressive number of views, but you'd also see that thirty five million people hated it.

But, doing any of these things would cause a drop in pageviews, so they won't do them.

[barney]

Don't they have some new rating system, voting system?  Seem to recall something about that on an RSS feed a week or so back.  Just figured it was a[nother] popularity contest, so didn't pay much attention.  YouTube doesn't get but a sliver of my time  .

[tranglos]

Don't they have some new rating system, voting system?  Seem to recall something about that on an RSS feed a week or so back.  Just figured it was a[nother] popularity contest, so didn't pay much attention.  YouTube doesn't get but a sliver of my time  .

-barney (January 04, 2012, 04:50 PM)

You can click "Like" or "Dislike" under a video, but it's been around for a long time. It's just that you don't see the number of dislikes early enough to influence your decision of whether or not to start watching a clip.

[superboyac]

47 million views for a slideshow?  Nobody likes it, nobody cares, yet there it is...

-superboyac (January 04, 2012, 02:57 PM)

I know what you mean. Of course YouTube (i.e., Google) could easily rectify that by doing one of the following:
- show the view count only to the uploader of the video
- not show the view count together with video thumbnails (show it only on the video page proper, after you've clicked through)
- show both the view count and the like/dislike counts with video thumbnails. You'd see the impressive number of views, but you'd also see that thirty five million people hated it.

But, doing any of these things would cause a drop in pageviews, so they won't do them.

-tranglos (January 04, 2012, 04:42 PM)

yup, exactly.  That doesn't bother me as much, since business is business.

Most of them I've seen are "music videos." That is, somebody wanted to put a song on YouTube but didn't have a video to go with it, so they made a slideshow that may or may not be related to the song/band so that you wouldn't be staring at a blank screen the entire time.

-Deozaan (January 04, 2012, 04:17 PM)

That's what I thought, almost exactly!  But the ones I'm talking about are not that.  The music ones are cool: you find a lot of old LP recordings that are nice.  The ones I'm talking about are the gimmicky ones; the ones that "trick" you to going there usually with a great thumbnail.

The internet is crazy.  The chaos is both impressive and overwhelming to try to understand.  It's like trying to understand 4chan in any kind of logical way.  There's no real logic.  It's just anarchy.  Chaos.  There's no beauty, no quality to it...it's basically just pure quantity.

[JavaJones]

I'm glad they show view numbers on search results, I use those as indicators a lot of times and while total number of views sometimes steers me wrong (depending on the search), it's still useful. But use thumbs up/down numbers on search results would also be nice.

As to whether there's money in this, do you see ads when you watch the videos? If so then your answer is most emphatically yes, there is money in it.

- Oshyan

[tranglos]

As to whether there's money in this, do you see ads when you watch the videos?

-JavaJones (January 04, 2012, 05:56 PM)

I swear I did. Once. In Chrome, which I hardly ever use. The ads were actually overlaid on the video, in the lower-third, translucent text-filled rectangles. I don't know if they were clickable. I felt this influx of visceral disgust and I didn't try to click them. They did not seem related to the video, or rather, I didn't get the impression that they were placed there by the uploader. (The video was a game walkthrough by a fan, totally non-commercial.)

I know I was not hallucinating, but like I said, it was only once and only in Chrome (with AdBlock Plus). Maybe YT is/was experimenting with ads, maybe they only work in a version of Chrome, or maybe the overlays were inserted by the uploader after all, I cannot be sure. But I saw what I saw and I never want to see it again

[barney]

But I saw what I saw and I never want to see it again

-tranglos (January 04, 2012, 06:54 PM)

Get used to it if you spend much time on YouTube.  They've determined how to insert ads into/onto the videos while they are playing.  So, apart from whatever ads might be integral to the video(s), now you have Google doing their bit.

[tranglos]

Get used to it if you spend much time on YouTube.  They've determined how to insert ads into/onto the videos while they are playing.  So, apart from whatever ads might be integral to the video(s), now you have Google doing their bit.

-barney (January 04, 2012, 07:04 PM)

In that case I'm glad I'm still using FF 3.6! Looks like whatever they came up with doesn't work there.

[JavaJones]

Ads are common and are often integrated into the video (overlaid actually). The video uploader doesn't put them there but they *can* benefit from it if they sign up for ad revenue share or something. Hence the benefit to the uploader.

- Oshyan

[barney]

Ads are common and are often integrated into the video (overlaid actually).

-JavaJones (January 04, 2012, 10:07 PM)

Some - most, probably - are overlaid.  But some are internal to the video, sometimes the reason for its existence.  (I'm learning more about that than I really ever wanted to know  .  'Tis not easy to seamlessly introduce a foreign video element into a video stream.  Now I know why I've avoided video as much as possible   .)

[superboyac]

Most of us probably have some kind of ad blockers, so we wouldn't see a lot of the ads.  I haven't seen a youtube ad in years.  My friends who use no ad blocking are constantly looking at ads on youtube.