there's a virus loose on planet earth it's infecting hundreds of millions of
adults and children every day on every continent each one of us is a potential
carrier welcome to planet YouTube an unrecognizable world in which your home
movie is bigger than a Hollywood blockbuster has been caught the New
World Order in culture and backyard science experiments can go global a
world where anyone can be a superstar he was the first through social media
worldwide phenomena where presidents elected as president United States and
dictators deposed with the click of a mouse
and it's anonymous so it's so dangerous and the power of the viral he's
unstoppable I was like wow well over the next hour
we'll get to the bottom of the epidemic tracking down the unlikely pioneers and
accidental celebrities who in just 10 years have brought world culture to its
knees
charlie bit my finger is one of the biggest viral videos in history
more people watch charlie bit my finger then tuned in to watch the moon landings
not bad for a video that was never supposed to be posted on YouTube in the
first place the video and charlie bites how his finger which I found quite funny
but probably a few weeks later I came back and looked at it and though that's
probably worth sharing with the boys Godfather in America now a world
exclusive we can reveal the untold story behind the sweetest domestic assault in
history on the day of the video what I was doing at Gary's are just a video no
boys after garden and there is a moment Charlie gets in a car and Harriet drives
him into bushes and leaves in there which I thought at the time was really
quite a funny middle little clip but when Charlie then bites Harry and sort
of fizzles but I just deserts because he's got him back he posted it on
YouTube expecting feedback from one person
instead within 10 months it had been viewed 11 and a half million times
everyone wants to know what is his secret but I think that is the beauty of
our video there's no secret if there was a secret I would have made us a second
one time but some academics who studied virals disagree some people think that
viral is just random luck chance that it's like bottling lightning but it's
not there's a science behind it a science that was about to be exploited
even before charlie bit my finger had entered the culture a video emerged of
Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho what he did next is almost
unbelievable so the Rinaldi no video was one of
YouTube's first big sensations in part because it was capturing something that
seems so superhuman this great soccer player taking the ball off the cross
pietà the goals four times in a row the buzz wasn't about Ronaldinho's ball
skills but whether or not the video was real there is something a little bit
suspicious about the golden box with the Nikes in them that he opens and the way
that it sort of pulls back so you can't really see the detail so well at the
most important moments there was a lot of speculation over whether it was real
or fake and debates the one on online the clip is the first to reach a million
hits before the creators are soon exposed as Nike a nutmeg lightbulbs come
on OLED replaced but actually there was potential in YouTube and online video as
an advertising medium Nike had subverted the home video viral and commercialized
the next mutation would be even more surprising On June 16 2006 a video
appears on YouTube with the tagline lonely girl 15
within three months the teenage star would be the subject of a media frenzy
bringing YouTube to mass attention
lonely girl 15 was this cute really candid teenager she was sort of fighting
with her parents a lot and she was arguing with her boyfriend you know if
you wrote an email to her she would respond to you and say thanks for the
idea you know here's another thought so
people formed this really personal connection to her within three months
over half a million viewers are tuning in for lonely girl 15 updates the more
eagle-eyed of them begin to notice that brief bedroom blog is just it was just a
little too neat you know the edits were a little bit too good the music was
synced up too well one fan went through and noted all of
the items in her bedroom were from Target so there was some conjecture that
maybe this was some sort of viral marketing fans demand answers from
brainy when she doesn't reply and LA Times
reporter smells a scoop it was a great mystery this girl hiding
in plain sight of the world he sets off to learn the true identity of lonely
girl but no one was quite expecting what he would uncover and that's when we knew
we had it in the summer of 2006 the viral video went mainstream as an online
mystery turned into a real-world manhunt the race was on to track down the
vlogger behind the latest YouTube sensation lonely girl 15 ok so kinda
meet again today this was like huge national news she wouldn't say where she
lived so there was this kind of treasure hunt kind of aspect to it
gradually the videos begin to take the form of a thriller with a plot almost as
intriguing as lonely girl herself it was a great mystery no one knew who she was
and no one could find her let's find who this girl is
there was a botanist to analyze the floor on the fauna in the video and said
it can only peer in this one little portion of northern California but we're
after ten fruitless weeds the reporter and his colleagues launched an audacious
sting 2-out lonely girl fifteen using an email
traffic in those days when you sent a message through MySpace
you could implant a tracking code that allowed you to see where that message
had been opened please set up a lot of fake accounts pretending to be fans of
local girl and send messages to her her MySpace page and it was open in the
server belonging to the Creative Artists Agency and that's when we knew we had
the creative artist agency represents actors writers and directors when
Richard confronts them with the evidence the real Gris comes forward 19 year-old
actress Jessica rose millions believed in her but it was all an act now for the
first time meet the girl behind lonely girl and the men who pulled the strings
so the idea was we're gonna build a huge audience we're gonna make them committed
and passionate about this character in the storyline and she's gonna run away
from home and then we're gonna release a DVD that will be an independent feature
film about the story of a group of fans on YouTube trying to find this girl
who's vanished the movie never happened but lonely girl continued online for two
years a different point of view when I was for
the YouTube viral video was evolving faster and faster rates but some videos
were more infectious than others inspiring viewers not just to watch but
to make a version of their own one of the first videos to have this effect was
created by an unlikely pair of backyard chemists my name is fritz and I had 20
years working as a professional juggler my name is Stephen and I had 20 years as
a trial lawyer when a friend of ours told us about this coca Mentos
experiment he asked me have you ever heard about this crazy thing you drop
Mentos in the diet coke and something happens and so Stephen came to visit me
and said we gotta try this so we went out in the backyard like a lot of people
dropped a handful of mentos into a bottle of coke oh this is awesome that's
how it started On June 3rd 2006 Stephen and Fritz posted their own coke and
mentos display online an epic 101 bottle tribute to the Bellagio fountain in Las
Vegas when we first put our video online it was a Saturday morning in June we
told exactly one person the next day rate 14,000 views and by mid-afternoon
and hundreds of thousands often telling one person by the end of 2006 the coke
and mentos spectacle had turned into a youtube mega viral with 12.5 million
views and something about it made people want to make coke mentos videos of their
own
diet coke and mentos what a fantastic means to makeover your Mac I've done it
myself am a biofilm of it I put it on YouTube in fact it's great it works on
so many levels and the one have it's sort of a science experiment you see it
and you go really is that really what
Steven and Fritz have their own theory for it's viral success everyone's
favorite moment in our video they always say it's that's that moment of humanity
that you can really connect with that's what helps make it extra contains the
contagion boosted global sales of Diet Coke by over five percent Mentos 15
percent Silicon Valley's Giants took notice of YouTube's growing power
meanwhile the explosion of video content meant that YouTube servers were sent
into virtual meltdown and there were times where were hours away from running
out of harder storage space I mean just overall we couldn't take any more videos
it was like four hours left I didn't think that it was going to blow up that
quickly I mean it was a good thing but it was my credit card that was getting
blowing up as well YouTube needed a bigger home fast you to a website that
didn't even exist two years ago was purchased today by Google for 1.65
billion dollars
the acquisition of YouTube by Google was one of the best deals in the history of
the world the estimated value of YouTube now is something like 70 to 80 billion
YouTube now had the resources of a major player the viral video was about to take
off in a whole new way I was looking for the right person who could do it I was
looking for that star who was truly a star
Scooter Braun was an ambitious music exec who recognized YouTube's potential
early on on YouTube scooti found a 13 year old Canadian kid who'd posted a
video of himself performing in a talent contest he first tried to launch him
with the record labels everyone said no everyone said no because they said well
this kids on YouTube we can't monetize this so the only way to make people
understand was to not care about the gatekeepers anymore and I care about the
suits and care about the people
so scooter turned back to YouTube and devise strategies for building Bieber a
cult following one of the tricks that I use that I've actually never talked
about in any interview is that I never let him introduce himself
the reason I did that is because when you watch a video when someone doesn't
introduce themselves and the videos extraordinary you feel like you're
getting to see something you're not supposed to see it's more exciting and
that was one of the tricks that I felt worked for us and made those views you
configure birth then the time came to test Bieber's online popularity in the
real world neither scooter nor the music industry
predicted how it was about to change everything and I announced with social
media that he was going to do an acoustic performance and sign autographs
in front of the Universal Music Building in London he played his guitar and a
whole crowd of seeing all the words one time
every one of the label was looking out of the windows just in complete shock
because no one had ever pulled the crowd that big he didn't even have a song out
and that's when I knew that it was working because of YouTube Justin Bieber
was the thesis statement of taking a person from YouTube and using YouTube as
a platform and building it into a worldwide star he was the first true
social media worldwide phenomenon and YouTube was the platform I chose to make
that happen YouTube has completely changed the music
industry on how we discover and how we promote things if you go to a record
label now and you say hey I have this new artist they say well can you send me
a YouTube you know clip and how many views does it have gatekeepers are
meaning less and less and less and the people mean more and more and more in
that it's democracy scooter had created YouTube's first-ever
global superstar but no one could have seen the epidemic heading our way my
biggest regret of entire my life was making the horse dance for within years
of its launch YouTube made it possible to almost instantly transform budding
pop stars into global celebrities the next superstar could be anyone and as it
turns out from anywhere
sigh was a South Korean pop star barely known outside of his country but with
over 10 hit singles to his name my previous songs and previous dance moves
and previous video all of them were like similar
then in 2012 he wrote a song poking fun his swanky neighbourhood Gangnam and
threw his energy into creating a new dance move his name of this dream Korea
you might think the district as some sort of ever heinous crime hot and
wealthy area I have my own choreographed teams in Korea and we were focused on
making a new move for the new song we literally tried everything on the
universe not just force but every animal every creatures on the universe so I
finally settled on an equine dance and made a video intended only for Korean
broadcasts I was not friendly with internet things
at all so I didn't do Twitter and I didn't do Facebook and I honestly didn't
know that much about YouTube before I know stuff but one of his team persuaded
him to post the new video onto YouTube two weeks later he gets a call from a
major player in the music business
my buddy sent me a video that had a hundred thousand views out of Korea and
I said I can make this huge he goes he wanted to do it in English I said not
wanted to keep it in Korean and two weeks later I'm talking with his
translator explaining that I want to keep it in Korean sigh looks at me looks
at his translator looks at me again and goes if you come drinking with me in
Koreatown tonight I'll do this deal and I looked at when I said you speak
English and he goes I went to Berkeley
scooter and his team used their network to help spread Gangnam style fever in
the West worldwide celebrate started to twit my video Britney Spears Robbie
Williams Tom Cruise people told me like your song became like trending of the
Twitter and I was like trending what is trending there were a lot of people
eagle to learn the business boost it seemed no one was immune from the
Gangnam infection not even the secretary-general of the
United Nations
she became the second famous queen of in the uterus right now and it triggered
countless caveats I think it's really a cultural phenomenon what he was doing
was crazy it was surprising and so they shared it with other people because they
couldn't believe what was happening like was it it explode you know like huge I
was like surprised literally every day and every moment like wow wow wow wow
nothing draws a crowd like a crowd few people share it and then they see their
friends shirt and they don't want to be left out so next thing you know they
start sharing it becomes a snowball we watched as this video spread from Korea
to the United States to South America to Europe as Gangnam style continues to
rack up 1 million views per day once I always be living in its shadow my
biggest regret of the entire my life was making therefore Stan Smith so I cannot
top it identity you know we came up with a game plan and
that video now is the most watched video in the history of the internet Gangnam
style has now been watched over 2.3 billion times that's the equivalent of
everyone in China Europe and America combined incredible it's like being
struck by lightning something that happened and I don't people ever happen
again on that scale
he gave a little bit of happiness to everyone the music has always done that
the difference is now a slightly overweight
sorry sigh over man from Korea I sent a song and an incredible piece of content
with that video put it online and the entire world can enjoy it within seconds
that was never possible before Gangnam style showed that YouTube now reached a
global population like nothing else soon it wasn't only pop stars harnessing
that power and for better or worse YouTube became the propaganda tool of
our tune in 2008 one visionary recognized the Internet's ability to
reach a new audience but did YouTube help elect an outsider
as president of the United States in 2007 Barack Obama was up against the
well financed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential nomination
Hillary Clinton had most of the party establishment behind her and so the only
path for Obama was to build a big national grassroots movement from
scratch Joe Rose Mars was a new breed of strategist employed to head up Obama's
social media campaign starting with Obama's own website I hope that you use
this website as a tool to organize your friends your neighbors in your networks
we can do a different kind of campaign here's the thing it can only happen if
you get involved we wanted them to forward along our content from YouTube
we wanted them to make phone calls from home we wanted them to knock on doors
one of them to chip in five and ten dollars here and there that was the the
nature of the grassroots activity a video of one of his speeches posted on
YouTube with vinyl and so - it is campaign
yes we tend video actually went viral in the weekend we didn't make the video
that was something that supporters made and then posted to YouTube which
ultimately allowed it to spread if you hit the right emotional notes this stuff
can go everywhere you are not dependent upon the media to define your message
for you but just as YouTube was inching Obama
ever closer to the White House his rivals hit back
questioning Obama's track record on the subject of race politics threatening to
split his support in half this was kind of a cliffhanger moment for the election
you know was this going to sink this candidate how would he respond and there
was a lot of build-up to the speech against all predictions to the contrary
we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity despite
the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens Obama's
race speech was hailed as a game-changer uploaded onto YouTube it snowballs
getting one point six million views in 48 hours
he really did knock it out of the park even his critics sort of admitted this
fueled by the success Obama's team posted over 2,000 YouTube
clips during his march to the White House he'd raised Obama's profile across
the nation it's me at the same time Obama fans were getting
in on the act posting their own campaign messages
online Obama girl was a huge viral video of the time scoring over 26 million hits
I went on YouTube once I don't know Poppins just to see what was being
generated under my name some of them were pretty creative you know people are
hungry for content that's outside of the traditional press YouTube allowed us to
run a grassroots campaign to elect an outsider as president the United States
it is my pleasure to walk after Obama became president he continued to use the
platform to connect directly with the nation three top YouTube creators here
to the White House today we're in the East Room and they have set up their own
YouTube sets right here in the White House great Sofia does it into Obama it
goes Obama's YouTube campaign proved once and for all
that anyone could get their message to the world
the value of a channel like YouTube is allows for the democratization of
content before only the media outlets could decide what news we saw but now
each one of us can create news in 2007 YouTube underwent a seismic change the
modern smartphone hit the mass market and this technological evolution created
a new way of capturing and sharing news called citizen journalism
one individual who shoots a video on their camera phone thousands of people
can view it in a few minutes and can you share the thousands more in the next
hour anybody with the mobile phone and access to the Internet can become a
journalist with the advent of YouTube
having YouTube clips of disasters as they're happening lends them this
intimacy and this reality that otherwise it would feel fairly abstract it's very
hard not to be touched enough to care
in the hands of citizen journalists the power of the viral video can turn
personal stories into global stories the YouTube allow people all over the world
to actually create their own mechanisms of sharing their own stories so you can
take a story that might be very personal and all of a sudden using virality make
it something that has a level of global sympathy in june 2009 during protests in
tehran 26 year old Neda agha-soltan was shot in the street these images from
Iran went viral on YouTube and shocked the world it wasn't just the fact that
she was brutally killed it was the fact that a video in very very visceral and
graphic detail showing her killing actually was being captured at that very
moment and they used YouTube to make that story much more global viral videos
began to drive social change change that was spreading across the
Middle East in what became known as the Arab Spring
abuse can't happen in in secret anymore whether it's autocratic governments in
the Middle East whether it's police abuse here in the United States in the
era of YouTube smartphones everybody's a potential journalist you can't kick
every potential journalist out of the country because you'd have to kick
everybody out of the country
every form of social change has always had a media component to it the
fundamental media propaganda tool of our time today is YouTube so that doesn't
mean that it's a truth-telling storytelling mechanism it means it's a
tool like any other that can be used by different parties for different types of
political and social aims YouTube had helped elect presidents topple regimes
and create worldwide phenomena now things were about to come full circle as
ordinary people would cash in big on YouTube fever today YouTube has given
birth to a new generation of media creators and the fan base is huge
variety just did a study among teenagers and asked them who are their top stars
and the top 5 stars for all youtubers
youtubers are ordinary people creating content for their own channels they're
trying to make youtube more like a TV network and they're promoting theirs
they're stars with the ad campaigns which is something that you only have
seen media properties do before think about the early days of YouTube we think
about the individual viral video the person who captured that one moment and
shared it with the world I think one thing that's changed dramatically is
that more and more people have been producing things regularly these
homemade YouTube channels are drawing billions of views creating a new
generation of bedroom millionaires two of the most successful content creators
on YouTube started off on the live comedy circle then created
epic Rap Battles Pitts two famous icons against each other in a rapping
competition and started performing live concerts in my bedroom for a camera it's
still performing live but you're through a camera lens instead you still say hi
and thank you and see you next time but if people watching are just throwing
their own computer yeah you get clicks instead of claps yeah they're epic rap
battles are produced out of this tiny studio in LA I get these headaches in
the back of my neck I have these headaches and strains in the back by
neck and then I look at the behind the scenes videos they're first featured
John Lennon versus Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly the video had a budget I talked
you know through the lens to the audience that was watching my videos on
YouTube is a few thousand people and ask them for suggestions of whom we should
do and they came back with John Lennon versus and Bill O'Reilly and we both saw
that we're like this is their this is fun
the John Lennon Bill O'Reilly video got about 150,000 views which was enough to
be like this is great we should do another one of these so we read through
the suggestions and we saw Darth Vader versus Adolf Hitler and we both again
nuria like oh this is that's funny the some reason Hitler was super popular
Internet then and then that one went really big back then you could get on
the front page of YouTube and it was like a big deal it meant a million extra
views you could change your whole life soon they're witty and inventive clashes
would start drawing millions of viewers on release day epic Rap Battles is now
one of the most successful channels on YouTube so what is the key to its
success I think that people like competition in there like getting behind
aside you know so people like to root for their favorites and then I think a
big thing about it was at the end of the video we asked who won and who's next
and people want to participate with amateur channels like these now making
millions YouTube is investing heavily by building its own studio in LA and major
channel creators get to use it for free YouTube has become the new Hollywood for
the average Joe you look at the top 100 channels on YouTube there's not a single
consumer packaged goods or apparel brand there today there's only a handful of
media companies but it's really individuals have been incredibly
successful in popular YouTube creators are a new kind of celebrity forging
one-on-one relationships with their fans through their computer screens the
individuals that have become incredibly successful are those that have been able
to cultivate an audience a lot of what you see which is successful in YouTube
is about humanity anyway is about people and faces they might be making you laugh
or might be emotionally charged it might be very sad it might be it's probably
human storytelling at its heart but what if the biggest stars on YouTube aren't
humans at all by the time you've finished watching this program over
18,000 hours of video will have been uploaded onto YouTube
on Planet YouTube you decide what you share and the content you post in the
virtual world can have an impact in the real world but did YouTube's founders
have any idea their little startup would make such an impact
it certainly has surpassed any goals that we had set when we first started
YouTube looking 10 years back we never expected I think videos to reach the
hundreds thousands millions billions of views YouTube owes its success - it's
phenomenal viewing figures but how much does Steve himself know about what makes
a clip go viral frequent videos that I would put up - always featured my cats
and it's not that my cat videos were of any particular interest other than it
being the first cat video on YouTube but what Steve could infer that was that
cats would become the viral superstars of the Internet
what makes the internet go around cats
there are more than 2 million cat videos posted on YouTube with over 24 billion
views cats are one of YouTube's most popular genres a little standoffish
they don't beg for your attention they don't beg for anything they could pretty
much take you and leave you and there's something about that in an era where
everybody is clamoring for your attention and dying for you to look at
them and approve of them that's actually very compelling so who are some of
YouTube's top feline stars if you ever hear a snarky reference to YouTube as
cats playing piano chances are this is the cause keyboard
cats original video has been viewed over 40 million times but one cat has gone a
step further and turned viral Fame into money
Rumpy real name tartar sauce is now a bona fide celebrity worth millions with
her own YouTube channel but feels and merchandising
but why cats my theory with cats is that people start to get this ability to make
videos very easily so they're sitting around and looking around their house
and that's the only thing that's interesting
now why cats vs. dogs I don't know that's the debate from the agency with
even cat videos proving lucrative business it's no wonder people are keen
to unlock the secrets of the viral video I think if you could put your finger or
what viral videos have in common then you'd make a fortune it's like playing
you a whole load of pop songs and saying these have all been hits what do they
all have in common it's you know you can sometimes find some commonalities
between the video it really is trying to nail jelly to the wall whatever the
reason some of YouTube's earliest stars have had their lives transformed now we
have EP bird studios and we make viral videos for brands like Coke and
OfficeMax and McDonald of McDonald's all kinds of things it keeps going the
madness continues they even have a viral manifesto there's certain
characteristics that make a video go viral
don't waste our time make sure you get down to business right away be
unforgettable do something we've never seen before but really ultimately it's
all about humanity recognize these guys you should Harry and Charlie's video has
now been and what does Charlie credit for its success if I see something funny
and it makes me laugh that's great and if I share it with you it also makes you
laugh together and have that shared experience the viral video has become a
social phenomena a contagion to which none of us has been muted mutant I
realized was the same feeling of self-discovery for kids than my dad had
with vinyl and I have with mixtapes it was this feeling of how I saw on YouTube
first I have ownership in that and with the power to rewrite the rules of pop
culture then with these gatekeeping industries and they are no longer
controlling what comes out of your computer screen you get to decide
my biggest wish maybe I can make another viral video within 50 years
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