Tag Archives: genius

Most Poetic Amazon Review Ever

I give you Philip K. Jamal… a fine gent who appreciates good prose. In fact I only wish I’d had this poetic review of my latest novel, Beyond Viral, before we went to press, because it’s just plain brilliant. I feel like T.S. Elliot. I think I’ll have a glass of Absinthe as I ponder the possibility of meeting this gent and discussing the subtle allegories of Beyond Viral (see website).

Perhaps the finest piece of literature since Faulkner's Billy Bud

Mr. Jamal’s review:

“As a well-respected connoisseur, I was a little wary at first, as I sat upon my davenport in the fading sun, browsing with much puzzlement at this book. It was quite a foray from my comfort zone of Voltaire, Hemingway, Lawson and Dreiser, and most of all, Cohen. Nalts, I have been told, is nothing more than a mere clown, a slapstick joker, making silly faces and engaging in tomfoolery for the masses! His prosperity is minute and his dwelling is exceedingly diminutive compared to what I love to call my quarters. How could one with an intellect that exceeds probably no more than a common house cat write a book that shines light on the ever growing field of online video? My thoughts were that if any sort of striking lady or wealthy baron were to spy upon me whilst I was reading from the pages of this tome, I would have no choice but to engage in instant defenestration, if for nothing more than to preserve my status amongst the elite. However, I found myself intrigued, amused, abashed, cowed and agape at the contents. It could be said that at a young age, I was never privileged with being granted the aptitude to comprehend even the most asinine of scripts, considering I never actually acquired the proper denomination to receive proper edification. With that said, despite the fact that I am a complete and total conveyor of fraudulence, I loved this book more than just about any other book I have ever held in my palms. It was winning, engaging and insightful to the fullest degree. I read it start to finish in one night, and I would pray you do the same. I will literally lose all faith in any higher deities would this book not receive any awards at any time in the future. Excellent, stupendous even. Mr. K. Nalty is a genious amongst people all beneath him. This has been met with some chuckles, but I have actually placed a framed visage of this man upon my eastern wall of the foyer for all visitors to witness. I’ve been inspired, actually, to reward all of my offspring with the middle name of Kevin from now on. My only complaint for this book is that after raucous googling, all of Mr. Nalty’s emotional support and muse that doesn’t come from his lovely family seems to radiate and be drawn directly from a small corner of the internet called the “comments pages” of his website “WillVideoForFood.” It would have been nice had he dedicated a chapter or two to these flawless minds and a full page picture of each of their heads (especially one dashing young lad with a charming smile, named “Reubnick”) and perhaps given all of them a signed copy of the book as a way of saying “thank you.” Other than that, there is literally nothing that could be criticized about Mr. Nalty’s masterstroke. This is a great stocking stuffer, by the way, chaps!

Don’t Call it a Viral Video Unless It Goes Viral. Till Then, It’s Just a Promotional Online-Video.

Semantics be important… especially for a relatively novel “space” like online video. For starters, I never much cared for the term “viral” marketing, because it had sick connotation. Like my marketing might make someone sick enough to cough on another hapless patsy. Then comes the term “viral” videos to celebrate the wonderfully horrible videos one couldn’t resist sharing. I created “Viral Video Genius” as a satire, people, and still use the phrase as an inside joke to piss off those too naive to recognize otherwise.

video virus

But still today we see “viral” referring to any video hoping to go virus. That’s just ridiculous, friends. Do you agree? By definition, a video isn’t “viral” unless it gets a lot of views. I used to say 500 to 1 million, but now you pretty much need 5 or 10 million to rise above the noise.

This post was inspired by a Tweet by Chris Brogan. He can’t be our new ZeFrank now because he acknowledged my existence. But Scoble’s up for grabs.

You see this guy, Mose, asked:

mose tweets

Fair question. If someone “seeds it” or pays to have it a preroll on some crappy video-sharing site that serves porn in India, does that count? ChrisBrogan, in a surprise move, punts the question my way:

chris broganNow this was surprising since I never figured Brogan for the type that would know the word “Nalts” (even if I’m kinda famous because I was on today’s eGuider reel with Daisy Whitney, Ben Relles, and that dude who MC’s the DiggNation show I stormed in my underwear. Can you imagine if all the people in “Welcome to eGuider” got together in a room? Would anyone get anything done?

But I digress from my digression. So to Mose and ChrisBrogan, in my infinite 140-character wisdom, I says, “Seeding counts as “viral”; not paid views. Lets call ’em prom online vids (pov) unless they actually go viral (rare).

Then Mose, who clearly has good taste, comes back with:

mose tweets naltsMose is suggesting we use the hashtag #pov to track any activity about “Promotional Online Videos,” a term that’s perhaps more accurate than “viral” when talking about the majority of videos. But having searched POV I’ve decided it must be a porn term, and that is just as well. Maybe this blog post will pick up some accidental traffic, giving me the same satisfaction of creating a “viral” video that had an average view-duration of .04 seconds. Whoops? Another digression. This will be the only post since 2008 that Nutcheese finishes.

Seriously, though. Seriously? Calling a video “viral” before it goes viral is like calling karaoke singers Grammy Winners. One in a million may well be, but let’s call them karaoke singers in the meanwhile.

In a year you won't remember anything I wrote in this post. But you'll still be offended that I used a Japanese woman to illustrate karaoke.
In a year you won't remember anything I wrote in this post. But you'll still be offended that I used a Japanese woman to illustrate karaoke.

“Secrets of Viral Video Marketing” at Yahoo! Conference

Your Uncle Nalts will be talking about viral video and marketing at the Yahoo! “Big Screen, Little Screen” event July 9 in Toronto, Canada. My topic is “The Secrets of Viral Video Marketing.” The funny part is that I was a late edition because Dan Ackerman Greenberg couldn’t make it.

Seriously. I couldn’t make something like that up. In case you don’t recognize the name, he’s the guy who wrote the TechCrunch article about how marketers can “game” YouTube with fake thumbnails, fake comments, et cetera. This blog called him the Wicked Witch of the West to my Glenda the Good Witch, and that’s something you don’t soon forget.

Dan- do you want me to renew the URL I parked (www.viralvideovillain.com) pointing to your LinkedIn page?

P.S. Y’all like the new masthead designed by The Most Excellent Gage Skidmore? He’s with Cosmic Flight.

willvideoforfoodnewbanner

My First Shout Out (boring “history of nalts” post)

Don’t know what a “shout out” is? It’s when you mention someone in your video. Don’t care? Stop reading. This blog entry isn’t for the industry watchers, but for the small group of obscure people that watch my crap.

I stumbled into my first “shout out” video recently. In this fake PSA I did about Revver.com, I spoof the “art” of independent creators, and shed light on the folks that were ripping content and then making money on it (my brother in law played the video artist that made $9 a week dropping forks on the ground). The video was called “Revverberation,” which would later become the name of my unofficial Revver blog that spawned this one.

marquisdejolieAt the end you’ll see a legal document that lists Marquisdejolie vs. Texas. I remember Googling for a legal template, then altering it with his name and then photographing it… wondering if he’d notice this homage since he seemed to be watching every new Revver video like I was.

I also remember going nuts that this video got thousands of views, since most got 50-100.  To gauge the magnitude, I adjust for view inflation by multiplying 2006/2007 views by 1,000 times. So this was a 3 million view video, as far as I was concerned.

More related trivia. When I was first featured on YouTube with “Viral Video Genius,” I mention being called an Andy Warhol of online video… “by a homeless guy in Texas. He has a blog. Google it.” Well this time Marquisdejolie caught the “shout out” before I had to spoon feed it, and no response tickled me like his spontaneous laughter clip. Can you listen to that and not crack up?

Here’s Marquisdejolie’s recount from a year ago, but I can’t seem to find his original blog post calling me the Warhol of online video.

And then there’s this post from MarquisdeJolie’s blog:

Nalts doesn’t need a tribute from me. He’s doing just fine on Revver and Youtube and Livevideo and Metacafe and wherever else he may be…. Wherever 10 or more viral video fans collect to watch videos, you find a Nalts video there…. I just needed an excuse to use his name in my blog so that the Internet search engines will spot my blog and up my ranking. His screen name is a commodity now like gold or silver or pork bellies. Use it in your blog and watch your hits skyrocket.

10 People Bought My DVD

Yey! Nine people bought my “Best of Nalts” DVD, which is precisely 8 more than I expected. Thank you:

  1. Damon (Maryland)
  2. Kimberley (Florida)
  3. Mattias (Sweden)
  4. Jason (New York)
  5. Krysta (Canada)
  6. Gordon (UK)
  7. Ian (England)
  8. James (Georgia)
  9. Diane (CT)

One of the problems about it is that you can’t select “play all.” Unfortunately, my Mac crashed and I lost the whole project so I can’t fix that. Thank goodness I produced the DVD, because some of those videos are gone except on this DVD and YouTube.

The quality is amazing, but people in general don’t like to pay for content they can get for free. So I didn’t expect to retire on this, much less cover my cell bill for a month.

Update: March 22. One more!

  • Robert R. (PA)