Gawker: valleywag, viral video

Viral-video dancer on the lazy way to become a star

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:20:00 EDT

Matt Harding, the guy who travels around the world taking videos of people dancing with him, knows how to work the system without doing much work. First, he got Stride gum to sponsor his video-making trip around the world. Since the result went viral, he's milked his fame on the speaking circuit. First he made yet another "dancing" video at Yahoo's Sunnyvale headquarters. Last week, he spoke at nerdy-person gathering Gnomedex in Seattle. Watch his talk and learn all about how much — or rather, how little — work went into the popular "Dancing" video. Or, skip to 4 minutes in if all you're interested in is yet another crowd of people doing Harding's funny-looking jig.

Secrets of viral video revealed, from "Chocolate Rain" to Cory Worthington's sunglasses

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:40:00 EDT

Think Tay Zonday came up with that whole breathing-away-from-the-mic thing on his own? Think that gopher came up with his dramatic look all on his own? Think again, buster. Eat your lunch, watch the clip from Revision3's Internet Superstar embedded above and learn about the Encino School of Viral Video.

Facebook's biggest threat could be visual image of retirees "poking" each other

Jackson West — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:40:00 EDT

There's little in this world that turns off the hardbodied young crowd faster than the the thought of anyone over the age of 30 bumping uglies. Hence, this sketch from New York's People's Improv Theater isn't just funny — it demonstrates the unintended consequences of opening up the social network beyond the confines of college cloisters. As Fadbook ages, both literally and figuratively, it's fate could be to serve as just another dated reference — like Myrtle's comeback in the sketch: "Friendster? What is this, 1908?"

Weezer's "Pork and Beans" deconstructed

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Want to understand the viral-video references in Weezer's "Pork and Beans" without having to actually play all 24 source videos? Video whiz Nick McGlynn has pared them down to just the essential moments, in one video. Click for an instant YouTube education. You can thank us later for the hours of your life we've given back to you.

Weezer understands how to work YouTube: allude to these 24 viral videos

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:10:34 EDT

Weezer has been geek rock since before I was logging onto the Internet using Prodigy in fifth grade. And who among us never wondered: what's with these homies, dissing my girl? Point is: the band gets the geeks. So it's no surprise that they understand one of the easiest way to go viral on YouTube and across the Web is to make multiple references to videos gone viral before. Check out the band's latest video above, "Pork and Beans," and then below, embeds of all of the viral videos referenced.

One Man Band

Numa Numa

Dramatic Gopher

How the Dramatic Prairie Dog was Born

Afro Ninja

Diet coke and Mentos experiment

GI Joe Gay

Guiness World Record for most T-Shirts worn at one time.

Chris Crocker - LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

Star Wars Kid

Crank That Soldier Boy

Evolution of Dance

"Chocolate Rain" Original Song by Tay Zonday

K-Fed Popozao

Daft Hands - Technologic

Daft Bodies - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Shoes the Full Version

Charlie The Unicorn

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!!!

Will it Blend

"Facebook Gangster" confirms Facebook has displaced MySpace

Owen Thomas — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:20:00 EDT

"Facebook Gangsta" is a transparent exercise in white guys parodying white guys parodying black guys. But note that there are no inside jokes about Beacon or shout-outs to Mark Zuckerberg. Just as Facebook is jumping the shark in Silicon Valley, it's crossing over into the mainstream, and displacing MySpace as a place for dating, mating, and relating. What this video really tells us: Zuckerberg's highbrow, Harvard-born creation is set to become just as ubiquitous, and just as stupid, as its social-networking rival.

How Levi's Jeans Duped The Internet With Their New Secret Ad

Nick Douglas — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:50:01 EDT

My friends are blogging about this viral video of guys doing backflips into their jeans. So neat! So shareable! So worth the million views the three-day-old clip already earned! But I could tell instantly (and I have no idea why no one else did) that this was a stealth ad — because it's a direct copy of a stealth ad that got over 3 million views last year.

After the first guy jumped into his jeans, I realized what the whole video would be: a shot-for-shot rehash of a viral ad for Ray-Ban. The two ads are so similar that the creators (unless they're phenomenally short-sighted) clearly wanted to be discovered. First, let's look at the two ads:

Levi's, 5 May 2008: Guys do backflips, swinging jumps, and other stunts and land in their pants.

Ray-Ban, 6 May 2007: A guy catches sunglasses on his face in increasingly impossible maneuvers: Off a house, off a bridge, in a moving car.

Similarities
The stories are the same: A simple trick to establish what we're watching. Then increasingly elaborate iterations, culminating in a stunt so dramatic that it requires a slow-motion replay.

The music is the same: A cool innocuous background beat loosely timed to the action.

The editing is the same: Quick pacing. Slick with dramatic angles, but calculatedly rugged with lingering shots on the guys congratulating each other.

The packaging is the same: Ray-Ban's ad was posted by "neverhidefilms," a YouTube user with no previous videos. The new Levi's ad comes from "unbuttonedfilms," another first-time user. The new ad is one day shy of coming a year after the old ad. The titles are analagous: "Guy catches glasses with face" versus "Guys backflip into jeans." No product is mentioned.

Background
While Ray-Ban's ad was launched anonymously, the creative team behind it soon came forward. Josh Warner, president of The Feed Company, explained how he promoted this viral video to Adweek. The team posted more videos, now more obviously advertising Ray-Ban though still without using a traditional ad format, to the YouTube account that hosted the original viral ad.

Extra evidence
Note the line at 0:36 of the Levi's ad: "At least there's no zipper." That's what clinched it for me: Levi's is the only jeans brand to actively advertise its zipperless buttoned jeans. The user name "unbuttonedfilms" corroborates this.

How well it's worked
Blogs like Laughing Squid and Neatorama posted the video with no guess about the creators (though political blog Hot Air guessed this might be a Levi's ad). Even G4TV's Attack Of The Show discussed the ad, crediting it to an unnamed group of gymnasts and making no mention of Levi's.

And of course even this debunking is giving them publicity. (Not that I mind as long as I'm getting some too.)

My Theory
Obviously the new ad has the same goals as the old: to market a product without actually naming it, by appealing to the public's love of Internet stunt videos. Most likely, The Feed Company made the new Levi's ad. If any other agency was ripping them off, they wouldn't release the ad a year later with the exact same techniques. And in a few days, The Feed Company will come out, because who can really deny themselves another round of publicity?

eBaum's World gets a buyout with strings attached

Owen Thomas — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:20:42 EDT

How much would you pay for a viral-video site which some have charged with stealing clips? Depends on who you ask. eBaum's World has just sold for $15 million. Or is it $17 million? Or $67.5 million? HandHeld Entertainment, the San Francisco-based developer of the ZVUE portable media player, has agreed to shell out $15 million in cash and $2.5 million in stock for the Rochester, N.Y.-based website. The rest will come over the next three years, if eBaum's World meets traffic targets and other conditions. The conditional nature of the deal reflects the buyer's shaky finances — and also, a growing hesitancy to splash cash on websites with uncertain futures.

HandHeld is borrowing $24 million, largely to finance the eBaum's deal. That leaves it with $9 million — not enough to pay eBaum's the extra $15 million it's owed under the earnout deal. That means that eBaum's $67.5 million isn't just conditional on its traffic — it's conditional on HandHeld's ability to raise money.

No matter. The takeaway from this deal is that buyers, for a host of reasons, are paying for performance when buying interactive properties. Either they're shelling out modest amounts, as Discovery did for the TreeHugger green blog, or they're placing conditions even on the most promising acquisitions, as Disney did in holding back half of its $700 million payout for Club Penguin. That's a clear sign, that despite the blog-business hype, it's still a buyer's market.