As 37,000 people have already seen on YouTube, kossack cartwrightdale posted an incredibly powerful Obama commercial last night. cartwrightdale's diary has been on the rec list all day, as has VirginiaDem's.
It is fantastic to see the quality of this grassroots video, and it's clear that YouTubers agree: it's on the list of today's Top Rated videos. But it would be even better to see it get a wider audience: Let's see what we can do to get this thing on YouTube's Most Viewed list!
YouTube is like any other measure of pop entertainment: success begets success.
Radio people have known for decades that people are more likely to request/buy/like a song that they know is popular.
It's for this simple matter that YouTube first implemented the "Most Viewed List." People want to know what other people are watching so they can, you know, watch it!
cartwrightdale's video is already on today's top rated videos list. That's great -- that means that people are giving this a 5-star rating, and it means a wider audience.
But if we really want to see this go viral, there's something else we need do:
Get this video on the first page of today's most viewed videos.
Why? Because, as I said: success begets success. People like to watch videos that other people are watching. Many people go to YouTube just to see what's popular today, and they watch the videos on that page.
In other words: making a video popular has the effect of making it even more popular.
Not only that, but the "Most Viewed" page is where YouTube takes you when you click on that "Videos" tab. If we can get to the first page, many more people will see that icon, see that five star rating, and click to see what the big deal is about!
cartwrightdale is already on the third page of "most viewed" today -- but the exposure will be much, much higher if we can get it to the first page. Their view counts aren't updated constantly, but we need a few thousand more views to get to the first page. And then we can really watch this thing take off. With any luck, we'll see it show up on the most popular videos of the week (which would mean several hundred thousand views).
First, e-mail this link out to everyone you know. Tell them to watch it, and tell them to rate it!
Second, post it. Tweet it. Digg it. Whatever it is you do to engage people online, get the word out.
There were a lot of comments in the thread about getting this ad on TV. I'd love that, but as we all know that will take an enormous effort.
In the meantime, we can get this out virally quickly.
What are you waiting for?
Start e-mailing this link! http://www.youtube.com/...
[Update 4:50 pm]: You're doing it! As commentor mem from somerville points out below, the number of views has jumped to 75,000. It's not on the front page yet, because they clearly don't dynamically generate that page. But it's going to happen. This thing is going to go viral!