Even want to see the first videos posted by some of YouTube’s most famous creators? What was Fred’s first video? It wasn’t on his Fred channel. How about the first Ray William Johnson, Annoying Orange, Shane Dawson and Smosh vieos?
I made a Delicious Stack that takes you right to them. The first videos of famous YouTubers. Enjoy.
Don’t forget the FIRST YouTube video, where 5 million people learned that “pretty much all there is to say” about elephants is that they “have really long and cool trunks.” That stuff hasn’t even begun to viralinate.
By the way, I was chatting with Mark Douglas (KeyofAwesome) last week at the Next New Networks office…Oh sorry, did I name drop? While in NYC I also saw iJustine, MysteryGuitarMan, ShaneDawson, ShayCarl and CharlesTrippy (see video proof).
Anyway, Mark and I were discussing what “viral” means anymore, and the number 4 million seems about right. Only a few videos hit that number in the month they’re posted. So let’s go with 4 million as 2010 viral, but that means 4 million views right away- not cumulatively over months or years.
I need to clarify again that my book proclaims “viral is dead” for commercial videos, I do not contend that viral video will ever end. Ever. As long as we humans like to experience something together at the same time, we’ll have viral hits. It’s just that they’ll rarely be advertising videos… and I don’t like to see brands cede their online-video marketing strategy and tactics to “going viral” due to these low odds.
So here’s the teleporting fat guy appearing again, featuring Smosh’s Ian and Anthony traveling forward and back in time, and meeting their future selves. You gotta love Smosh for persisting and persisting with their comedic duo even when their managers sometimes sell ’em out too much. Smosh could pimp Amway and I’d still love ’em.
Wait- was this post about Smosh or about how many views it takes to make a video meet the definition of “viral”? Oh who cares. Just watch the face of Teleporting Fat Guy when he hears about the sponge bath. Hey did I include Smosh in my book? I can’t remember.
AdAge called out the biggest YouTube sellouts— those known for sponsored videos for top brands. Naturally my headline would have read “YouTube’s Most Prolific Sponsored Artists” had I been included in the list. For those of you whose nipples don’t get pointy when you hear words like “advertising, marketing, Mad Men, spot, creative brief, storyboards, USP, reach, frequency and single-minded proposition,” AdAge is kinda the Forbes for advertising junkies. It’s like Men’s Health except some straight people read it.
shaycarl t-shirt
The actual article is titled “Meet YouTube’s Most In-Demand Brand Stars,” and it’s a nice representation of the booming webstar, perhaps the central point of “Beyond Viral,” an amazing new book by Wiley & Sons coming out Sept. 21. Despite some conspicuous misses and a few odd inclusions, the article points to some interesting nuggets like MysteryGuitarMan (MGM) preference for a blank creative brief… his videos have never been better, and each one squashes my own confidence more aggressively than the next.
I would have also liked to read a “who’s who” of the companies that link stars with brands (Hitviews, Mekanism, PlaceVine, Howcast, YouTube). That’s something you don’t see covered well, and it’d be fascinating to read about the total market for sponsored videos and the dominant players.
TubeMogul helped compile this list, and you can see the webstar’s vital signs on the TubeMogul marketplace. The stats seem to be out of synch with YouTube’s counter and other sites (TubeMogul has me at 145 million, while YouTube alone counts 161 million…. so my views on Yahoo Video and other sites must be negative 16 million). It could be that once I “private” a video (like those I’ve buried because I no longer like them), I lose Tubemogul credit for them.
Before I could go to bed sulking for being overlooked by AdAge and Tubemogul, I discovered author Irina Slutsky sent me a note about this a week or so. And yeah I missed it. Just like the two e-mail offers to appear on AnnoyingOrange, one of the hottest web series by DaneBoe.
ADHD online-video creator and marketer seeks minimum-wage e-mail account manager from India.
These peeps don’t seem to read my blog, but I consider more than a few of them as friends… Trippy (he’s been in my kids’ bed), Buckley (he spanked me), Penna (wrote the Nalts theme and couldn’t get into bars at early YouTube gathersings), and Shay (he was new, we collabed, then he became twice as big as me overnight… and also got a lot more viewers). Others are more like acquaintances like Justine (who keeps a safe distance, but I made her what she is) and Smosh. Speaking of Smosh, Ian and Anthony get props for the recent Butterfinger Snackers video (“Selling Out”) that spoofed the criticism they’ve taken lately for doing a few too many sponsored videos. Heh. I did a Butterfinger video in 2006, a year before I goofed on this whole sponsored-video space with this video, which mentions Smosh. I’m guessing the Smosh kids never saw this diddy…
It’s me 3 years ago mimicking the emergence YouTube “sell outs” and the personalities who might desperately broker brand/webstar love connections... you know, the entities connecting brands and web stars. Most YouTube webstars know more about engaging an audience than turning a brand strategy into effective and persuasive messaging… so they need help. There are some exception- like Rhett and Link, who could just as well be their own boutique creative agency, as reflected in the quality of their advertainment and the highly unusual ratio of branded to non-sponsored views. I almost like their sponsored videos better than their brand-deficient ones because like a pro athlete they make it look easy.
And, lest I miss mentioning my book (Beyond Viral) in a single post, you’ll find mention of almost all of these cats inside the low-cost pages… including featured sections on Rhett & Link, Charles Trippy, Shay Butler and others.
Hey what ever happened to Buckley? I think he ignored me like Caitlin Hill (thehill88) and iJustine. Maybe Buckley needs an e-mail intern… I wonder if there are any Indians with the name Mason?
