Just a quick update almost 2 years later… the Jose Offerman video is now over 193,000 views. The point of this experiment was to show how a properly titled/tagged video will spread organically online if launched at the right time. If you’ve been here since the first post you know that after uploading the video I didn’t send the link to anyone in order to truly measure how the video would be discovered. Usually I’ll share a video with as many people as possible right after launching it in order to maximize organic pickup, but in this example I wanted to show the power of proper video packaging technique. Mission accomplished 
If you’re interested in seeing how this started from the beginning, check the first post of the blog.
Update
YouTube Insight? Yes, please.
Ok so I’ve been talking about these Insight #s for awhile now – and finally they are here. Hurray. Now we can see exactly how the video was discovered so quickly by so many people.
Getting data like this wasnt possible until YouTube launched Insight in April ’08. Insight breaks down the source of the views and spits everything out in nice graphs. The main metric associated with online video is “views” – but without knowing the quality of the view (who’s viewing it and where) its impossible to tell the overall value of a video and its “views.” Before YouTube launched Insight you’d have to track where your video was spreading manually by searching for it in Google/Technorati, but you didn’t have the exact #s and it was much harder to get a true picture of where the views came from and the real value created. YouTube Insight gives you the numbers, and its pretty neat.
The chart below breaks down the different ways people found the video:
The highest percentage of views came from YouTube search, which was my goal. I thought the it might have been even higher than 35% – I’tll be interesting to see how it changes with the 2nd day statistics included. My strategy was to optimize my keyword opportunities (title, description, tags) to maximize YouTube search discovery – specifically trying to win the term “Jose Offerman.”
YouTube Insight gets even cooler cause it breaks it down to specific keyword totals:
The second highest percentage of views fall under the category “Embedded Player.”
That means that 31% of people watched the video on blogs/other sites – not directly on YouTube. Here’s the breakdown:
The next highest category was “Related Videos” with 13%. These views are coming from the “related videos” section of other YouTube videos. Insight breaks it down and says which videos people found yours from.
The biggest one, Trompon Jose Offerman, was the version of the video embedded by many of the first blogs who broke the story (Huffington Post, Deadspin) It’s keywords weren’t optimized though, which explains why I came up for a “Jose Offerman” YT search and it didn’t.
The next two categories are ones Insight can’t breakdown to specifics. Apparently 1,123 views came from mobile devices, and 400 came from Instant Messanger/E-mails.
External Links was next with 399 views. Here’s the Insight breakdown:
I also got 244 views from Google Search – i bet this # goes way up when the 2nd day numbers are processed.
Ok, so thats explains how/where the video was discovered by people. In a different set of graphs, Insight breaks down exactly who these viewers are based on location, age, and gender.
YouTube has a formula that measures “video popularity” per country and this is what it looks like. With all those early comments being in Spanish, these results aren’t too surprising.
Since the incident took place in the DR involving a coach of the Licey Tigers – a popular team down there – I thought the first people to search for the video would be from the DR/South America. The early Spanish comments kinda confirmed it. Now these numbers prove it. Nice. I expect these numbers to shift heavily when the day 2 stats are incorporated. After the first day the majority of the comments have been in English .
Here’s the breakdown based on age:
Now by gender – although this chart is obviously wrong, lol.
While I expect the views to be mostly male, this chart is obviously messed up – maybe tomorrow with the next days numbers it’ll be fixed.
The last cool feature of YouTube Insight is this chart called “Hot Spots.”
YouTube is able to track how users watch the video, second by second, with this graph:
YouTube is able to track whether or not people are leaving the video and when they are going back to see something again. Unsurprisingly the video hits its peak right before Jose throws that right hand – which looks like it whiffs. If he was gonna get banned by baseball anyway he might as well have made contact. Embarrassing.
48 Hours after Launch
OK, so 2 days after I put the Jose video on YouTube, here’s the stats:
YouTube Awards
Pretty crazy. This blog also got over 100 unique visitors today, check it:
Tomorrow the YouTube Insight #s should be available and that will give me a better idea exactly how this video got so many views. Should be interesting – at least for me lol.
Jose passes 20k
Last two updates have been big, check out the current stats:
Although “Total Views” reads 23,326, The graph says the video at almost 30k – pretty amazing. Definitely moving along faster than I thought it would. I think today was the videos peak though, we’ll see.
Mmmm… these Awards taste good
With this latest YouTube refresh I got some slick awards, boo yah.
Pretty sweeeet. By getting these awards I’ll get additional organic pickup from the YouTube Most Viewed list under the Sports vertical:
Unfortunately, my video doesnt come up anymore on a YouTube search for “Jose Offerman.” I was replaced by the AP, lol. I still think 20k is possible before sleep time – i’ll make one more update later tonight. The Insight #s are still unavailable – hopefully tomorrow everything is working right. Here’s the current stats:
not too shabby for not sending the video to anybody, lol.
*EDIT* – looking at the graph above it shows 20k+ views even though it says 16,676 right above it. I bet the graph is accurate and the view count outdated, weird though. Usually the graph is the same as the number until both refresh – or so i thought. YouTube likes to mess with you.
YouTube is Funny
The YouTube Insight data still isnt available yet for some reason. It usually takes only 1 day to process, but whatever. YouTube is funny sometimes. The Jose Offerman video updated again to 13,608, with 61 comments now and 10 favorites. It looks like the video is getting about 1.5k/2k every update, which happens every 3 or 4 hours. Silly YouTube.
I still think most of my views are coming through people searching “Jose Offerman” in YouTube – check out what it looks like.
Still me and ESPN. Now it shows the updated title and a more recent view count, but its still only says 8,839.
I think I’m also getting views from Google searches now as well. The best scenario would be getting my video on the front page of a “Jose Offerman” search – but thats a tough keyword string to win. I do however come up at the top of a “Jose Offerman punch” search – check it:
The video is also spreading in other ways – people are using my link to share it on blogs and discussion forums. By doing a Google Search of my YouTube video code, Wu4-p_OjzfY, I was able to find where people were linking/embedding my version of the video. The best place I landed (that got me the most views) was this gossip blog called Bossip.com:
Here’s a few more links from blogs/forums that use my video:
Hopefully the YouTube Insight #s are working soon. I’ll check back in later.
10,000+ Views and Truckin’
Just woke up – #s look better than i expected. Video now shows 12,029 views and 55 comments.
I bet more of the comments that come in today will be in English… we’ll see. The YouTube Insight #s still arent available but ill check again in a few hours. Time for breakfast my grandma loves cooking me eggs living with her has its benefits!
