Kevin Allocca is YouTube’s trends manager, and he has deep thoughts about silly web video. In this talk from TEDYouth, he shares the 4 reasons a video goes viral.

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Glossary

• propel – drive or push something forwards
• sprout up –  to emerge and develop rapidly
• loop – a structure, series, or process, the end of which is connected to the beginning
• geek – a knowledgeable and obsessive enthusiast

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Think about it

 Answer the questions below.

• What does the number 48.00 refer to?
• Why did the video of the rainbow go viral? Who are tastemakers?
• How does participation help videos go viral? What did it look like in the case of “Friday” by Rebecca Black and the Nyan Cat?
• What is the third factor that makes a video go viral?
• What does it all mean to you?

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Practice makes perfect

Fill in the blank spaces with the missing words.

So what happened on this day? Well it was ________  Friday, this is true. And if you’re wondering about those other spikes, those are also ________. (Laughter) But what about this day, this ________particular Friday? Well Tosh.0 picked it up, a lot of blogs starting writing about. Michael J. Nelson from Mystery Science Theater was one of the first people to post a joke about the video on Twitter. But what’s important is that an individual or a group of tastemakers took a point ________ view and they shared that with a larger audience, accelerating the process.

And so then this community formed of people ________ shared this big inside joke and they started talking about it and doing things with it. And now there are 10,000 parodies of “Friday” on YouTube. Even in the first seven days, there was one parody for every ________ day of the week. (Laughter) Unlike the one-way entertainment of the 20th century, this community participation is how we become a part of the phenomenon — ________ by spreading it or by doing something new with it.

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