TubeMogul reports on the short shelf life of online videos (courtesy of ReelPopBlog). While it’s true that 25% of video’s views tend to occur within the first 4 days, this is a bit missleading. First, TubeMogul focused on videos exceeding 1,000 views and the website is used more by serious content creators looking for broad distribution. Second, this means that 75% of the videos occur over an extended period beyond four days.I can usually tell within 4 days if I have a hit or a flop, but many of my 650 videos have a “slow boil.” My most popular videos continue to garner views in aggregate, and that exceeds the count of the most recent videos.In a similar model, a blog tends to start with a dozen readers. Then that eventually grows to hundreds and thousands. The delusional blogger begins to believe that his daily posts are read by hundreds. In fact, those visits are aggregated views to the creator’s entire legacy of work. The long, long tail.If I stopped creating videos, it wouldn’t be long (6-12 months) before I was forgotten nearly entirely. But for a period, my old videos would continue to get views as people stumble into them via related videos and random searches.I try to keep a rhythm of creating daily — or every few days — because that fuels viewer interest in my old work and also gives the viewer a reason to subscribe. It also helps keep me from getting constipated. I was constipated yesterday for real. Man did my farts stink.