High Five for First Kiss: The Birth of a Viral Video

This is one of those times, this is one of those times where a crazy story is just waiting to be unleashed.  This week, I experienced something I never thought I'd experience, I'd never imagine I'd experience.  What happened?  Well, let me tell you.

Wednesday Night: May 4th, 2011.  I was perusing Facebook, as usual, and my news feed was fuming.  My eyes scanned the headlines, stopping on a video Ms. Tiegra Boots had posted a minute before.  Most videos make me stop, this video got me to click the "play" button.  I opened up the video in YouTube and immediately noticed it had only 32 views.  32 views?  That's pretty mightily small.  I laughed and proceeded to watch the video.  I watched.  And I watched again.  And again.  I realized something.  This video was GOLD, I had stumbled upon something special, real special.  This short video simultaneously shone brilliance, caught my heart off-guard, finally defined the word "cute," and excited me, very much so, to the point where I began sharing little Elliott and Bowie's first kiss.  This was the video:

  

Now, my first reaction was to share.  So I did.  I showed a lot of people, a lot of Internet people.  I posted it to my Facebook, I posted it to my wedding videography business' FB (Mawwiage Films), and  I made my way onto Reddit.com, a social news website with a MASSIVE fan base and proceeded to post the "high five for first kiss" video under the title "I don't care who you are, this is the CUTEST EVER."  People began commenting, people began voting it up, people began enjoying it.  I watched as the video that had 32 views upon my initial viewing made it up to 1000+ before I went to bed.  I was pleased, I posted something that was getting views!

I woke up in the morning to see it have around 4000.  Wow!  Tripled overnight! People must have shared it! I'm impressed!  The day went on, views started climbing.  I noticed a spike and went to investigate: Super Blogger Perez Hilton (link to post) had posted the video on his blog!  WHHHAAATT!  I'm pumped.  Can't wait.  This thing's ERUPTING.  By the end of the night, the video had well well over 100,000 hits.  I went to bed, who knows what's going to happen while resting in slumber.


I wake up, take a look at the comments, and upon investigation, find this little gem:

My main man, Mr. Justin Bieber, checkin' the interwebs, findin' something he likes, and posts it to all 9,000,000+ of his followers on twitter (here's the link to JB's post/twitter).

My friends, at this point, I am simply awe-struck.  There I sat, 2 short days earlier, watching this 32-hit-ridden video.  There I sat on May 6th, looking at Justin Bieber twitter, thinking to myself "Woah, this is the real deal ladies and gentleman."

I'm going to use the famous idiom: THE REST IS HISTORY.



"High five for first kiss" broke the milestone 1 million views on the 6th, and now sits at (the time of writing on the 8th) a lofty 3,913,298 views.

This my friends is what going viral looks like.  This video about a cute little boy and a cute little girl being all flirty and teasing, eventually leading to a short kiss, their first kiss, in which the little boy, Elliott, proclaims to the entire world through loud cheers that he has in fact kissed Bowie on the lips; this short little video took the planet by storm and will continue.

If I am this excited over this video going viral, I can't imagine what the families of both Elliott and Bowie are feeling right now.  I literally can't imagine, because I have nothing to base it off of.  I know one thing though: they are having the times of their lives.  I'm excited to see where this incredibly opportunity leads you.





This has been an incredible journey.  New surprises arise every day and it's likely not to stop here, it's going to go, go, go.  I learned something big: CONTENT IS KING.  Why does a video go viral?  Because people like the content and they share it.  Yes, the initial plant and who sees it first, getting it into the hands of the right people, all that jazz, it sorta matters, it matters to get it started.  But the real jet fuel is the people of the world sharing the video with their friends.  You see a video, you like it, you share it.  If the content is not sharable, your video's not going to be seen by millions of people.  Content is everything.




So what's next?  Get one of my own videos to go viral.  That's likely not to happen, but hey, it's the next step. Sometimes next steps aren't attainable, and sometimes that's a good thing.




Thanks for reading, have a great day, and always be on the lookout for anything and everything, you never know when something like this may happen.




One last little fun snippet:  I realized later that someone had posted the same video on Reddit before me.  The difference was his video did not get very exposure because he posted it in an apparently obscure sub-genre of Reddit while I just posted it in the "video" category.  Check it out:

Connor, if you're reading this, you know exactly what I'm talking about when I say "similar story."  Thanks GRVeee2!  I can't thank you enough.  And I'll repeat it, sorry to steal your thunder!  I'll just let you know, I've thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout this whole ordeal.