On October 24, the episode was chosen by YouTube’s editors for a full-day homepage editorial spotlight, along with the ThreadBanger channel page. The result was a two-day spike in traffic of over 330,000 views on the episode, and another 200,000 views to other episodes on the ThreadBanger channel.This, combined with a similar situation in the Podcast section of the iTunes store, made this simple episode of ThreadBanger the most watched video created by any Next New network. More imformation and pretty pie charts detailing the audience splits and percentages can be found HERE.
Why is this important? The Internet video, as a form of mediated communication, is so easily distributed and outsourced that this sort of thing can happen over night. This might sound more a testament to proper marketing, but it's also one to the nature of the video itself. Running at only 2 minutes and 40 seconds, it's a bite of information, unburdened by specifics and particulars, cut quick and smooth. From start to finish, the video is laden with pop culture and global politics homages, making the video excessively communicable to a wide audience that, unless they lived under a rock the last year, would easily pick up on the references. The style and structure of the video must be credited just as much as the marketing behind it. Without an effective product, there never would have been anything for YouTube and iTunes executives to go behind and in order to crete an effective product, it must appeal to the strengths and needs of the medium.
UPDATE: Now, onto what I did for the day. In the morning, Ryan asked if I wanted to help the Barely Political guys shoot some footage for a video centered around poking fun at Yankee fans. Sadly, I had to pass. My Boston heart would not have been able to handle standing in a crowd of Skankee fans cheering on their over-expensive, heartless team in the wake of a championship.
Next on the list was less painful. Tasked with finding a group of fan-made tutorials to present to Erik, I toiled away for hours going through the submissions folder, searching repeatedly for any video with "How To..." incorporated into the title. By the end of it all, I had amassed about seven or eight videos of varying quality and after showing them to Erik, was given a list of demands. Message this person to get more footage. Double-check to make sure we didn't use these already. Edit down this one. Monday I anticipate to be doing more of the editing down segment.
