Tuesday 19 February 2013

OUGD406 - Communication is a Virus : Virals

For this brief we are focusing on how communication can become a virus. I am going to initially look into the videos, tweets and images which have gone viral in the past.



Joseph Kony was virtually unknown to the majority of people until invisiblechildreninc made a youtube video informing the world about Kony and the terrible life he leads. After a short amount of time the Kony video went viral. It currently has 96,536,341 views and 1,394,612 likes. As this video became viral it was shared through various forms of communication. The most common was probably Facebook.





One of the most recent viral videos is the Harlem Shake dance. It involves people coming together and dancing in a humorous way. It starts off very controlled and then breaks into a large collection of different dance moves made up on the spot.


With the release of the film 'Pitch Perfect' the 'cup song' went viral. This involved Anna Kendrick singing the Lulu and the Lampshades song 'You're gonna miss me'. Since this was showcased in the film and also on the popular American talk show 'David Letterman' videos have begun to appear on youtube and over the web. 





The Redbull skydiving record achieved by Felix Baumgartner was another video which went viral. The difference between this video and the others was that this was globally broadcast live. Views of this video shot up in a matter of seconds, therefore making it viral. 



Tom from McFly posted his wedding speech onto youtube and it has now received 8,007,899 views. It was shared over the social networking site Facebook which in turn made it a viral video which was watched by many people. 



Source

'Charlie Bit My Finger' is a popular YouTube video and has been around for a number of years. This is an example of an amateur home video posted onto the web and becoming a virally shared video in several countries. This has brought a level of celebrity to the boys featured in the video, who recently appeared on the 'Big Fat Quiz of the Year' with Jimmy Carr.



Music is not always classed as viral as songs and videos are meant to be widely listened to and watched. The PSY Gangnam Style was a one off youtube hit made by a Korean man. This video and song hit the web significantly and quickly became number one in many countries. 


What it Was:
An average web page of moderate popularity will receive a few thousand hits, and they’ll take home a tiny slice of ad revenue. Alex Tew thought that this plan was for suckers, so he decided to turn his entire homepage into a space for advertisements. Not just any advertisements; Alex sold a 1000X1000 pixel space at $1 per pixel. Depending on your resolution, that’s about half of the period at the end of this sentence. This means that when every pixel sold, Alex made well over a cool million.
Why it Went Viral
The currency of the Internet is, above all else, novelty. That is why dancing Jesuses and animated .gifs dominated the Internet before we all got sick of them. Alex’s idea was not only novel, but he somehow turned the most bald-faced money-making scheme into an interesting story. Combined with a super low barrier to entry for advertisers looking to capitalize on fame, it’s one of those ideas that sounds ridiculous, but when it works everyone swears they thought of it first.




The Old Spice advertisement featuring a popular football player from America was another video which was very popular in the USA. It was shown during the ad break for the American Superbowl which is known to be the most valuable time to run. When this advert crossed over to other countries it was also very popular. The tone of voice within this ad was the main attraction point as it grabbed peoples attention through humorous tone of voice and simple ideas.



Twitter is a social networking site which monitors topics people are talking about the most. These are called Trends. Twitter lists the most popular trends around the globe, country and regional areas. People can use these within their tweets whilst also choosing to hash tag any phrase of their choice. Trends possibly link most to this brief as anyone can choose to hash tag anything and it is then up to the users to make it popular.







The Obama campaign was widely reported on Twitter with Obama himself tweeting images of him and his wife after he was awarded anther 4 years in office. This image became one of the most retweeted of 2012.





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