How do we decide what makes it into the chart?

We scan several million blogs a day to see which online videos people are talking about the most. We count the number of times each video is linked to and the number of times each video is embedded. Every morning, after we've had a cup of coffee, we publish a list of the 20 videos that generated the most buzz over the previous day. We reckon this is a pretty good yardstick of what's hot and what's not.

At the moment we only look for references to videos on the three most influential video sharing sites: YouTube, Google Video and MySpace. We plan to add more soon.

We also considered wiretapping your email and IM to see what you were talking about, but figured it was illegal ;)

Can we track the virals that your agency makes?

Sure. Contact us, if that's your kind of thing. We may release a chart of viral commercials if there's enough interest. And we can always do bespoke stuff.

Why do we call them viral videos?

Because the popular ones spread virulently, and their dissemination in some ways resembles the spread of infectious diseases. Viral phenomena on the internet are often also called memes, a term coined by Richard Dawkins.

How big are the biggest viral videos?

Big. The most viewed video on YouTube is currently The Evolution of Dance, which was watched by 10 million people during April 2006 and has now been viewed over 30 million times. The guy doing the dance medley, Judson Laipply, is now not merely a motivational speaker from Cleveland, Ohio, but an internet superstar.

This is why ad agencies wet their pants. Imagine reaching 30m people for the cost of a round of drinks in your favourite watering hole? Rarely happens, though. While some agency work is pretty good, most of it is staggeringly awful.

Viral video stars

2002 - David Hasselhoff extends his cult status with the sublimely awful video for Hooked On A Feeling

2003 - Ghyslain Raza unwittingly finds fame as the chubby Star Wars Kid  when classmates leak his homemade video onto the internet

2004 - Gary Brolsma brings the Numa Numa craze  to the US

2005 - Wei Wei and Huang Yi Xin, otherwise known as the Backdorm Boys, become minor Chinese celebrities with their lipsynched cover of 'I Want It That Way'

2006 - Peter aka geriatric1927 , a 79 year old British pensioner, becomes the most subscribed-to user on YouTube in the space of two weeks with an endearing series of autobiographical videos

More facts and figures

  • According to Hitwise, the top 5 sites in the US for online video are YouTube (43% market share), MySpace (25%), Yahoo! (10%), MSN (9%) and Google (6%) (Hitwise, 24 May 2006)
  • Hitwise ranks YouTube the 42nd biggest website in the world (Hitwise, 24 May 2006)
  • comScore Media Metrix ranks YouTube the 40th biggest website in the US, with 16 million visitors (comScore Media Metrix, 15 August 2006)
  • Alexa ranks YouTube the 13th biggest website in the world (Alexa, 06 September 2006)
  • Every day over 60,000 new videos are uploaded to YouTube and over 100 million videos are viewed - that's 3 billion videos a month (USA Today, 16 July 2006)

References

Wikipedia entries