London-based, Unruly Media recently launched Viral Video Chart “the first chart to independently monitor the popularity of videos” from the world’s most influential video-sharing sites i.e YouTube, MySpace and Google Video. They tried looking for references to videos on Yahoo AOL MSN for a while, but nothing ever made the top 25 so they stopped!? This is surprising given that according to Hitwise, the top 5 sites in the US for online video are YouTube (43% market share), MySpace (25%), Yahoo! (10%), MSN (9%) and Google (6%) (Hitwise,24 May 2006)
So if you want to know the number one video that people are talking about today, you can find it on www.viralvideochart.com. Equally there is also a weekly and monthly chart available, plus an archive of previous number ones.
The chart is compiled by listening to a variety of ping servers that scour millions of websites every day – 100,000 per hour or nearly 2,000 per minute – and looking for new links and embedded videos on people’s blogs and/or personal websites. They then count the number of times each video is linked to and the number of times each video is embedded before publishing a daily list of the top 25 videos. Technorati Video already does this but only for YouTube.
Today Unruly Media is a three-person technology-driven media company, based in London, UK. Founded in January 2006
Scott Button, CEO of Unruly Media, believes that the chart will be a valuable resource to web users looking for a quick fix of entertainment: “Over three billion snack-sized videos are now being viewed every month on top video-sharing sites like YouTube, with millions more being added every month. We wanted to bring the best of this stuff together in one place in an objective and authoritative way.”
The creators of the site have been surprised by the broad range of content that the chart contains, from the usual clips of fat kids falling over through classic internet humour (Gary Brolsma, the author of 2004’s Numa Numa craze just released a new video) to trailers and premieres for large media corporations (a trailer for the new series of the Simpsons claimed the number one spot last Monday). Today the no.1 video is the moving and inspiring video “Free Hugs Campaign” which has the brilliant backing track “All the same” from the Aussie band Sick Puppies. [note: if you like Hoobastank, Dishwalla, Green Day etc. then you will like the Sick Puppies.]
Sarah Wood, one of the company’s founders added: “The chart provides a fascinating snapshot of a single day’s cultural zeitgeist. Taken together, these snapshots will form a compelling archive of cultural moments. Just imagine how powerful it would have been if we’d had an archive of the top user-submitted video clips from the day that Kennedy was assassinated or the day the Berlin Wall came down? From now on, every major event gets such a companion-piece.”
Talking with Scott this morning, clearly it is early days and there are some exciting new features to come and improvements in the UX. The revenue model will be a combination of advertising and/or sponsor placed videos on the side of the page.