Overall, YouTubers are losing subscribers and views at a rapid pace. It took some dot connecting to determine the cause, here is what appears to be going on. From VidstatsX, below is a list of the top 20 subscriber losses for the last 7 days:
SUBSCRIBER COUNTS ON DECLINE
First, it should be noted that while view count numbers on YouTube are ultimately the most valuable metric for determining actual revenue, for serial publishers, a subscriber is more valuable because one subscriber usually accounts for many future views.
The account with the largest decrease in subscriber numbers this week is the #17 most popular channel, Fred, with a loss of -146,035 subs over the last 7 days - a significant 6.8% drop - followed by the #7th most popular channel, Shane Dawson, with -118,312 subs lost over the last 7 days, accounting for a 4% drop. Both are top channels and both are losing at a significantly different rate, but both, along with most channels on YouTube, are on a significant day-to-day downward trend across the the entire site.
Today, Rocketboom’s total subscriber count is 117,889. Since we relaunched our main show in the last month, Rocketboom has seen a drop of over 2000 subs.
The question on everyone’s mind is why? As a reader, I’m assuming your first thought is that the content is just not as good anymore and people are no longer responding like they used to. Granted, I’m pretty sure most other YouTubers joined me in wondering the same about their own content too. But why is this happening across the board for almost everyone? People are describing havoc from unexplained losses around the world.
For Rocketboom in particular, this is happening right as we are rebooting so I originally attributed the losses to our own unique situation. We knew that a lot of people who regularly enjoyed Rocketboom became quite attached to Molly, and so when Molly moved on, naturally, they would reject her “replacement”. Not only did we expect this, but some outspoken users made it clear that they were unsubscribing for this reason. On the other hand, Keghan is doing a top notch job and our audience is telling us as much, and while I’m certainly biased, I’m feeling our episodes are as good as ever. I noted for comparison that even with us helping to direct disoriented viewers to Molly’s channel, Molly’s channel has been losing subscribers at at even greater rate. Which does not make sense. Her subscriber count should be going up now that her account has become linked to the MDC network and she has become highly active in publishing. This is what lead me to look beyond my unique situation where I found everyone else talking about similar experiences.
REASONS, REASONS
A few months ago, YouTube said they were undergoing a systemwide purge of inactive accounts. This was more apparent awhile back for many who saw a massive single day drop. But the purge has clearly been continuing on in smaller batches, and it’s not yet finished. Theoretically, because the deleted subscriber accounts were already inactive, the drop in subscriber numbers should not effect the potential view counts for new releases. This is absolutely sound logic.
The cause for the dramatic difference in drop from as much 15% for some accounts over the last 90 days to less than 1% for others, is likely due to the age of the account along with the history of each account’s outreach tactics. The older the account, the more likely it has more inactives, naturally. And because some accounts pay for subs, or engage in sinister activity to game subs, it’s likely that those accounts are seeing a higher percentage of loss.
Though ineffectual to actual revenue generated from view counts, many YouTubers have relied on their subscriber numbers as a form of boasting to advertisers and businesses about their “potential” value as YouTube traditionally organized their most popular charts by subscriber numbers. That will now change. In the past, subscriber numbers were closer to equating with expected view-per-video numbers, but clearly that is now far from the case. Making matters worse, Google analytics, which YouTubers rely on for in-depth stats reporting is broken with regards to subscriber accounts, according to recent comments I read from an active YT engineer.
LOSS OF VIEWS
But people are still freaking out all over the place, and they are noticing an overall declining trend in views and thus, assume that there is a relationship between the loss of subscribers and the loss of views. I found dozens upon dozens of reports from people in just the last couple of weeks claiming that authentic subscribers are being automatically removed and in other cases, not being notified of new resleases, suggesting that there is an additional problem of the subscriber mechanism not working properly. This appears to be confirmed by numerous publishers with low enough subscriber numbers to followup and track the behavior of particular individuals, possibly contributing to the decline in symmetry between subs and views.
Compounding the mystery, YouTube has a hard time with cache and it often takes hours and sometimes days for statistics - especially views - to update. YouTube has been making major improvements in this area but is still far from real-time, causing confusion in trying to determine causes & effects.
There are however two major contributions to view losses beyond subscriber issues which appear to be having a signifigant effect for most publishers:
1. For most accounts who would otherwise be on a systematic rise, the majority of the loss in views is likely due to the rollout of YouTube’s new Pando site design. There are many awesome benefits to the interface, but YouTube effectively killed off the most important and perhaps most progressive form of long tail growth: the suggested/reccomended video. In the old version of the site, aimless and semi-aimless users were better distributed across many accounts, where as now, the Pando design forces more views to many fewer accounts. As YouTube has grown, the consolidation of traffic to fewer accounts has created a much quicker and greater growth spurt for those accounts that are featured, and less new traffic to everyone else.
For example, if you want to browse “news”, the category we usually list Rocketboom in, there is only one page of channels to select from, and then you come to a dead end. The entire discovery mechanism of YouTube has been nuked, leaving users with only a tip of a tip of a tip of an iceberg. As you can imagine, this will set the stage for YouTube to put the power of the whole platform to work for their recent investments. I like this idea a lot and think it’s smart - we’ll soon see shows with 50 and 100 million subs - however, I think there is no reason to cut off depth for those users who exhaust YouTube’s limited content offerings and wish to continue to browse more options than a single page of channels. This is akin to providing only 10 search returns for a Google search, and then leaving the user without any way to discover the other 10 million returns that might be more suitable in the long run. Note below there is no next button to get to a page 2 after selecting “browse news & politics”:
Seriously, if you want to browse channels by news, you must select from “news and politics” and you get less than 20 total options, including the Whitehouse channel, the US Military channel and Fox news. Whatever YT’s business is for doing this, considering how much amazing content is available even on just the tip of the platform, it certainly is a sad day that they have boiled it down to just 20. Yes, worth repeating: this is a major shame for the greater good of the world, without question.
2. There also appears to be significant view loss, naturally, as a result of the growth of pre-roll advertising this year. I absolutely LOVE YouTube’s feature which allows you to skip an advertisement after 5 seconds (and it’s dumbfounding to me that advertisers are not using that first 5 seconds effectively), but this has nevertheless caused many people to move along. People expect sites to load in milliseconds and waiting 5 seconds is a lot to ask, especially if we are not sure what we are going to get. Yet many of the preroll ads do not have this feature and force the audience to watch the entire ad. For casual viewers who are not already anticipating your content, this is a lot to ask and causing an increase in friction towards new subscribers, and causing an overall decline in potential views compared to yesteryear. While I have not heard any announcements, I’ve noticed that YouTube made major changes last week now providing pre-rolls and interstitial commercials between YouTube videos when brewing on the iPhone. YouTube, however, can not be blamed. Quite the opposite. For partners participating in ad revenue, the monthly check, what I like to call “the steady drip”, is on the up and up. And every publisher has the option to deselect pre-rolls if they choose.
On the flip side to Pando overall, for those people who do have conviction for your content, publishers are seeing more views per viewer as a result of auto-playlists carrying the user into another video without taking action. Pando is all about the playlist.
In closing, despite the systematic disappointments, lets face it. If you are looking for growth as a publisher, there can be no bitching and moaning until you have done more to make your content better, especially in your own eyes, a process that must never end.
You may have been wondering where Rocketboom has been for the last several months. The wilderness? Sitting around selling stamps? Nope. Looking for Keghan.
You would think a grand search through the depths of YouTube would lead you to the talent you are looking for pretty easily, wouldn’t you? You might even think that having access to Hollywood agents, or subscription platforms like Backstage might help, right? Well YOU WOULD BE WRONG!!
If you have ever enjoyed Rocketboom in the past, you know that we put it all into talent and I can tell you with all certainty, talent is very rare. So rare. We find ourselves going to all ends of the Earth to find it. For example, we’ve gone as far as obtaining America’s first international O-1 work visa for an Internet TV show and then went on to secure one a second time. We’ve also been known to pay the highest salaries in our field - whatever it takes. If you have ever met anyone who has worked at Rocketboom, on-camera or off, I’m sure you will agree, without a doubt, they are talented.
Over the last several months we have been winding down all of our client work (something that started to pick up a couple of years ago but ultimately became too distracting for sucking out all of our time and creative energy). We also ran a show for the amazing PBS Parents channel online (it won an award a few months ago) and alot of past Rocketboomers have gone on to work with PBS on some really cool projects.
Another program we have been working on is Humanwire. Humanwire has been on Rocketboom for years and years but over the last 6 months we have grown our correspondent base to 130 vetted video journalists around the world, all on standby and producing assignments. It’s just a sign-up page now, but Humanwire has officially spun out of Rocketboom (in a similar way in which Know Your Meme spun out of Rocketboom) launching with three episodes per week with the expecatation of growing to as many as 10 per week by the end of the year. It’s not exactly a secret who we have partnered up with for this project, though I’ll leave it up to our formal press releases soon as the new show will launch on May 14th.
Late last October, just as Rocketboom was about to carry on with the next iteration of the daily news show - literally days from release - I decided it just wasn’t good enough, scrapped everything and started over. From scratch.
Which leads us to Keghan. After a harsh, depressing and very long and drawn-out search, about a month ago, there she appeared - the needle in the haystack we were looking for - and the rest, as they say, is history. Keghan moved from Los Angeles to NYC just last week and today, I can surely say, Keghan is going to take Rocketboom to the next level with her larger-than-life, smart-as-a-whip personality.
I think it is amazing that people still enjoy Rocketboom, almost now in it’s 9th year. My only explanation is that we have hit upon a format that continues to work, much like the night show format which continues on pretty much unchanged after decades (Guy stands at front of stage with hand in pocket for intro monologue with jokes of the day, then sits at desk with coffee mug and index cards being silly. Camera expands to guest-star in chair stage right of desk. Throw to band. Interview another star. Repeat.) The format is there, though it takes an extraordinarily rare kind of talent to turn it on, and make it brilliant. Please welcome aboard Keghan!
I have a bit of interesting financial detail about Rocketboom to share. It’s a method of fund raising that I don’t hear others talking about, and it feels wrong somehow, but also it’s working great, for now, so I wanted to throw it out there and see if anyone had any major criticism. One of the (many) ways I have kept Rocketboom afloat over the years is through a relationship I have built with Apple. You could say I am a lurker of sorts. Or perhaps you would call me a bona fide fan boy (since my first BBS which I ran on an Apple //e many years ago). Now I’m trading $AAPL stock, and making a very significant amount of revenue to help keep my business growing.
IMO, this is perhaps one of the most controversial ways in which I spend my time. Last year, after selling my Know Your Meme business, I made the difficult decision to take a hefty portion out of the proceeds and secure my own life with it. That obviously left Rocketboom in need of more support. While I’m no less dedicated, after all of these years, I had to draw a line and secure my own well being. I found my personality is completely unafraid of risk when I believe in something and have spent my every last dollar more than than once on Rocketboom. So now that I’m in a secure position with my own personal finances w/o ever having to worry that I will spend it all on Rocketboom, I’m actually in a better position to operate and grow Rocketboom. And the time to do that now, market-wise, as it turns out, is now.
At first, trading Apple was exciting. Each day I came home from the office and looked at all the money I made that day, just from letting it sit there. Once I got a margin account, I understood, more than ever, how the rich just keep getting richer. It’s certainly jaded me from my otherwise typically idealistic mindset but that’s another story.
As I began to study more about the market forces that effect Apple’s stock price, I noticed immediately that the biggest problem, OBVIOUSLY, was that trading consumed and distracted me from running my company. I like to create things and spend my days engaging in activity I hope is beneficial to the world. Trading Apple makes me feel selfish and guilty. But like the many professional traders who do wonderfully beneficial things with the money they make, it’s helping to enable me too.
First, Rocketboom
By some analyses, Rocketboom, as a business, started “too early” (almost 8 years ago), during a time when there was literally no marketplace to support it. Over the years, I’ve generated millions of dollars in revenue, but the vast majority required inventing a new market proposal out of thin air every time, a new market justification to support it and then a new workflow to execute. Nary a sustainable standard insight. By other analyses (such as those of my own), Rocketboom owes everything it has to coming at exactly the right time. Most of my colleagues who started out around the same time, and gained a spark, have almost all given up or pivoted, having spent millions upon millions driving their business into the ground.
That’s because most of us thought the market place for Internet TV would happen sooner. But this is media after all. Think about how long it’s taking for the newspapers to die. It tends to take much longer than your typical Silicon Valley startup investment cycle to break down and disrupt an entire media industry for good. Sure, in the platform wars, there is already at least one major online winner on the hosting front: YouTube. But in the content wars, there isn’t actually any war at all. There is comparing and contrasting. There is awesome and crappy based on individual tastes. But the tools of the trade, and the value of the reach are now officially democratized.
The marketplace for content, on the other hand, which is here and in many ways growing, is STILL not supportive enough with any market standards. To say the least, for any online production company, it’s a RISKY business right now. You’ve got to lay awake at night thinking about how you are going to sustain and take it to the next level if you want to keep growing your product.
Next, Apple
As a relatively inexperienced entrepreneur who is wired to think more like an artist, I’m inspired by Apple and look up to them with wonder. I try to learn and apply what I can. I know this sounds cliche, but Steve Jobs is one of the only people who has inspired me. It’s a twilight of the idols in almost every other case.
So I figured, if I could just attach my business to Apple, theoretically, I could do proportionately just as well in terms of going up when Apple goes up, and going down when Apple goes down. Since I believe in the company and believe it will move up for now, more so than I feel the market can support Rocketboom’s growth right now, I feel I’m significantly decreasing my risks and setting aside a lot of worries regarding profits. All the while, using the extra money to improve upon my own products while the market matures.
So I take any revenue I do generate from Rocketboom, aside from what is needed to operate, and put it into Apple.
After awhile, I found from paying more attention that I could make even more money than Apple each day, proportionally speaking, by studying a common phenomenon that causes the otherwise healthy company’s stock to slip. The stock will drop for any number of reasons on any given day, so I’ll try to get out when it’s falling, and then wait for it to hit the bottom and start moving back up before safely buying back in with confidence that the company is going to keep selling more iphones and ipads tomorrow. If things get really messy and volatile, I just stay out and wait for a trend to happen. I’ve done some shorting too which takes this concept even further. The biggest predictable dip of my life just happened this week and I played it perfectly, thanks to the signals I picked up from experienced online traders who tweet play-by-play all day, one of the sources I use to decide what to do each day (*note: hard to find the signal in the noise there, yet another story)
You don’t need me to convince you that Apple is a valuable company that will likely keep growing, but here are the main points I think about in feeling bullish that Apple (and thus Rocketboom) will keep going up…for now:
1. My grad degree is actually in interface design, so I can appreciate the importance of what Apple has created and see why it’s ahead of the competition.
2. As of last month, Apple had only 9-10% share of the global mobile phone market. I.e., lots of room for growth. And though they only had 9% share, Apple generated over 75% of the profits of the entire market.
3. Unlike rivals such as Google and Facebook who give away free software such as Android and online CMS, Apple’s iOS comes with a hardware sale that causes people to turn into zombies and stand in lines around the world to be the first to pay hundreds of dollars for each new product.
4. Apple’s hardware cycle refresh rate is so rapid, people continue to buy more and more hardware. Some people buy new iPhones once or twice a year. I pay so much money to Apple it’s kinda crazy. But I only pay about $10/year to Google for gmail space and thats it. And sadly for Google’s advertisers, I don’t notice. Big difference in revenue streams. Just walk into any Apple store and you know what I mean.
5. All around the world, the Apple stores make more money per square foot than any other brick and mortar business on Earth. Though Apple also makes a significant amount of sales via their website and other stores.
6. Unlike other Silicon Valley companies, Apple is making the most progress in entering China. Out of the 1.4 Billion people in China, Apple has just established their first stores and now have 5. I.e., lots of room for growth.
7. During the 2008 recession, when Apple got dragged down with the market crash, guess who bounced straight up first and has been going up ever since? Even with the most expensive products on the market, Apple can sell out at the bottom of a depression.
8. The executives running the company post-Jobs have been there for ages and have (so far) taken almost no risks to jeopardize expanding on what they have. They will need to innovate to sustain, sure, but they are way ahead of the curve for now.
9. They have a lot of cash. LOTS AND LOTS of it. More than they need, according to them. They have formed a special committee to try and figure out what to do with it all! And don’t tell me how many countries they could buy, we know!
At least I can say this distraction has led me to study Apple more closely and I have been learning more about other businesses which at times has been applicable. Like a good liberal arts education, I guess I’m adding to a more well rounded understanding of how the rest of the world of business works while learning to develop my own. Am I doing it wrong?
As we’re gearing up to relaunch Rocketboom, we face an interesting conundrum. When Rocketboom originally launched, we were reaching an audience who consumed our content in two main ways: they either came to our website daily to see each new episode, or they used podcasting or feed readers to be reminded of new daily episodes.
The entire format of Rocketboom was designed to reach this kind of audience. As such, it worked best for us to release a new episode each weekday as it fit in nicely with people’s daily consumption behaviors and kept us fresh and on top of the beat.
That was over 7 years ago. Today, most people do not watch their favorite shows by going to destination sites or by downloading files to their mobile devices to watch on the go, though some do. Of course most people consume their favorite internet shows via YouTube, via subscription reminders.
Before selling Know Your Meme, I noticed that most people who came to the website didn’t know or care about the show, and most of those who watched the show, didn’t know or care about the website. Even when we made efforts to cross promote, for the most part, the audiences remained in their silos.
Now, as a result of the side-effects of subscription based YouTube audiences, the time of day you release your episodes, and the frequency with which you release them have their own sweet spots which calls for a reconsideration of any design that does not act in concert.
In terms of frequency, when we release new episodes on YouTube daily, each video tends to have significantly fewer views on average than when we release videos every 2-3 days, due to limiting the amount of time a current release sits in a subscribers queue before getting kicked out by a newer episode. What’s really disappointing is that the skew is so dramatic, over the course of a week, more views (and thus more revenue) can be generated by spending significantly less effort and money. In other words, it appears to be way more economical to have fewer episodes on any one channel.
Though Rocketboom traditionally released new episodes in the morning, at around 9am, today, the sweet spot on YouTube (for the US) appears to be about 4pm Eastern Time. There are likely a number of reasons why this is, but whatever they are, it appears to be the best time to release to gain the quickest momentum over the shortest period of time.
We’re just about two weeks out from re-releasing the show. I was hoping to have it launched already but decided to wait until we are ready instead of force the date. In terms of a new schedule, this is the issue up for discussion today. I think we’ll probably take the opportunity to flow more with the economics and demands of YouTube in our release schedule. If anything, it will give us more time to make each episode better, and more time to focus on post-publish activity.
If you look at the last five Presidential races, in each case, the candidate who spent the most money, won.
Over the years, I’ve learned a few things about politics because my Dad was a major influence to the Democratic party and I payed attention to a lot of the things he was doing. He was a great man in my book and became one of the happiest people I have ever met, a workaholic entrepreneur driven by the pure passion of Democracy and opportunity for everyone. Some of his closest friends even accused him of being a Socialist.
When he first got his jet, he would fly Ann Richards around when she was campaigning for Governor of Texas and got some time to talk with her about various issues he was interested in. There he became dramatically inspired, and became interested in politics like I had never seen before. Ann Richards actually won, the first woman Governor in Texas.
Because Texas was next door to Arkansas, my dad became friends with Bill Clinton who was running for Governor at the same time. My dad LOVED Bill Clinton. If you ask me, I would say Bill Clinton was one of the smartest, most effective Presidents America has ever had. If you asked my dad, he would agree and add that Bill Clinton was the best man alive.
When Clinton was running for President my dad got much more involved. He rallied all of the trial lawyers in America, a massive group of people who are predominately Democratic, and have the wherewithal to donate to the cause (i.e. top 1%). The limit at that time that any one person could give, by law, was $2000. Today, you can give up to $2500 max to any Presidential candidate. My dad would host parties at the house in Dallas and invite the la-di-da of any field to meet and inspire everyone they could to donate and go back out with the inspiration to get their colleagues to donate too.
For my Dad, it was ALL about the money. That’s because he knew that money wins elections. Whoever has the most money, has the most money to spend and whoever spends the most money, wins.
This goes for the primaries and especially for the major Presidential elections. The more money you have, the more you can spend on resources to keep up, pull ahead, run TV Commercials, get endorsements, mobilize volunteers door-to-door and on the phones, billboards, front yard signs, robocalls (I wish they would ban robocalls but sadly, it’s one of the most effective tools to use in negative attack campaigns by both candidates in the last days of a Presidential election), ignite inspiration (the best!), PR, PR, PR, and of course, RAISE TO SPEND MORE!
When Bill Clinton was elected, this was pre-Internet boom, mind you. 1992. He went on to became the first ever President to send an email.
Most people in America could not afford to give thousands of dollars to the candidates of their choice, so for the most part, the candidates would ignore almost everyone when it came to spending their time efficiently on the campaign trail. In other words, if you don’t have any money, you might be able to see a Presidential candidate speak if you are ambitious, maybe even ask a question from the audience, but you probably couldn’t get close enough to one unless you could pay $2000 plus at a fundraising event. To that end, many take the opportunity to manage a couple of minutes to mingle, and offer their support, with the hope their relationship will endure. What would you say for $1000 a minute?
With the strong support of my dad, after Bill Clinton out-raised and then defeated incumbent George Bush Sr., Clinton offered to nominate my dad to become a Supreme Court Judge. My dad actually considered it and even spent a couple of days shadowing one to see what the day-to-day activity was like. He just wasn’t interested. Plus, he would be required to sell his law firm. He told me that it was actually a pretty boring job.
For Al Gore’s run, my dad raised amongst the most, if not THE most money of anyone on Gore’s campaign finance team. Again, it was the trial lawyers, one of the wealthiest, largest groups in America, getting so much money to the Democrats. Sometimes people would put their money behind an opposing Republican candidate, and my dad would convince them to give to his Democratic candidate too. A lot of business people give full amounts to both the Republican and Democratic parties. My dad pointed out some of these people at various events and I would study their behavior to obtain a reference point for people who actually have a zero percent level of integrity.
THE DIGITAL GENERATION
It was during the race with Al Gore vs. George Bush that I got involved myself, so I decided to use the tools that I knew best, my computer. I’ll save the details of my own participation for one of the next posts but it was others who had the same idea that pitched in with their keyboards - it wasn’t going to be just about the money for long.
As a matter of classic campaign finance history, the Howard Dean scream marks the end of a new begging in raising campaign funds in the digital age. Howard Dean took my dad and the rest of the world by surprise like a ball right out of left field. The Dot Com Boom had come and gone, but now, still standing in the ruins of Silicon Valley, was the online shopping cart. Major sites like Ebay and Yahoo! effectively brought the shopping cart to the internet in a way that got people in America comfortable with the idea.
Suddenly, people were giving to Howard Dean in record micro-donation numbers. $10 here, $5 there. It was so significant, Dean shot up, out of nowhere, and spent, and got more, and people noticed. From a complete unknown and outsider to cant-deny status it was money, from anyone! The other candidates were still mostly ignoring the web at this time with small amounts of their own spending, just going after the top 1% as usual. It was the new Bored At Work who sat at computers all day with above par salaries while scrutinizing a variety of information online and participating with blogs and forms, that were becoming influential.
However awesome, it was still a pretty small percent compared to the classic, top-dollar machine. Howard Dean eventually lost out in the primaries to John Kerry and his Kerry’s running mate John Edwards. Kerry/Edwards lost to incumbent George Bush Jr. and Dick Cheney. Gives ya shivers to remember all of this doesn’t it? The money is one thing, but finding the right person for the job is an uphill battle.
My dad eventually got the internet and election after election, through Clinton, Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards and Obama, my dad became one of the most important people to have on your team. The same was true for the Democratic primaries and when Hillary Clinton was running for President, she wanted him, and so did many others. It KILLED my dad that he choose between John Edwards and Hillary Clinton when they ran against each other but he knew he would support whoever won in the primaries and raise as much as he could to win the election for the Democratic cause. He would of been excited if Hillary would of won and he would of become Attorney General had Edwards not fucked it up so bad for himself and everyone around him.
Just as Obama raised the most funds, and just before he won, my father, Fred Baron, fell weak from cancer and passed away in October, 2008.
HOW WILL SOCIAL MEDIA EFFECT THE RACE?
Already in time for the 2012 Election, the Republicans have raised over $186M but most of that has probably been spent now, fighting against each other. At the top of the heap, Romney has brought in over $30M for himself, twice that of any of his contenders. This suggests he may win the ticket. Obama has not been sitting around waiting for this to play out, though. To date, for his 2012 re-run, Obama has already amassed $100M and doesn’t have to spend any of it to fight other Democrats. Interestingly, Obamas micro-donations account for an estimated 40% of his money so far.
Considering the exponential growth of people with access to online payments, along with the power of the established social media landscape to take control of the message, this election will see many surprises. Don’t you assume Anonymous, Reddit, and #OWS for example might actually be influential?
For some reason I have become especially interested in a couple of topics: 1. The effect of the international online community - If you don’t live in America, what can you do to contribute to effecting it legally, for after all, you may have a strong opinion and might be effected in your own country based on who wins in the US and 2. What about Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, blogs and YouTube in terms of their contribution to campaign finance? After all, the reason for raising the most money is to spend the most money on press, yet these platforms are becoming the biggest, most influential press there can be, for even people are now themselves the press and as you know, everyone has their opinions. More on these topics soon.
To add to the lot, I decided to broaden the perspective beyond a US-centric outlook while narrowing my focus, for which I here present, THE GREATEST BIGGEST MOST IMPORTANT FURTHEST REACHING MEMES OF 2011.
THE MOST IMPORTANT MEME OF 2011
Undoubtably, the single most important meme of the year got it’s start one morning almost exactly a year ago, on December 17th, 2010. A young man, stuck in a faltering social and political system, managing to just get by as a fruit vendor, simply could not take it anymore. Mohamed Bouazizi was a well-liked 26 years old who supported a family of eight and was known to regularly give away free fruit and vegetables from his street wheelbarrow, though he did not make enough for authorities who regularly harassed him for bribes.
Just after 10:30 a.m., the police began harassing him again claiming he did not have a vendor’s permit, even though a permit is not required to sell from a cart. After arguing with a policewoman, she slapped Bouazizi in the face, kicked over his cart, made a slur about his deceased father and then confiscated his scales.
After refusal to be heard or seen by the courts, unable to regain his scales, Bouazizi obtained a can of gasoline from a nearby station, stood in the middle of traffic before the Governor’s office, shouted “How do you expect me to make a living!?” and then doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire.
The city was Sidi Bouzid in Tunsinia and the people were enraged. Protests began taking place within hours and continued to grow every day. After Boiazizi passed away on January 4th, the protests swelled to an all-out revolution leading President Ben Ali to finally flee Tunisia for his own life on January 14th, overthrown.
Inspired by the success of the revolution in Tunisia, a protest against poor living conditions began in Bayda, Libya on the same day, January 14th, triggering a violent reaction from the police, subsequent anti-Gaddafi protests throughout the country and by October, an overthrown government.
In Egypt, anti-government protests began on January 25th and Mubarak was overthrown by February.
The list of revolutions in countries throughout the region carries on, inciting dramatic, rapid change. Some solute Facebook. Some solute the internet in general. To many the idea is as old as Democracy. Whatever we have witnessed this year with the Arab Spring, it’s tied into the idea of Freedom, which is an idea as old as any, perhaps the most powerful meme in all of humanity.
THE FURTHEST REACHING MEME OF 2011
The Death of Bin Laden was probably the furthest reaching news story on the planet. ”Pssst, did you hear!? Bin Laden is dead!” “OMG, REALLY? Hey, did you hear?” “Yeah, Bin Laden, amazing.” This event is named for being the most likely news story to reach the furthest expanses of the entire Earth. Think beyond Google and Twitter. Beyond Michael Jackson. Imagine the person in a small village in the Amazon (the rainforest, not the website), the practically uncontacted tribe member. If they get any news about the world at all, they might at least know about a “massive tribe” (that which we call America) and it’s “enemy”. People throughout the most remote regions on Earth this year, so many still without adequate food and water, let alone without an ipod, were probably more likely to hear about the death of Bin Laden above and beyond any other international story. If you can remember the moment you heard the news, you probably couldnt help but turn to anyone around you to share.
This meme had the most epic, historical topic of war, which humans in all cultures can relate to. And it was a headline ten years in the making. A single man against the most powerful factions of the world. We were so ready for this news, we didn’t even need to see the evidence, we left it up these folks who saw the pictures for us:
This reaction-image of the US’s top brass in the “Situation Room” viewing the evidence of Bin Laden’s Death became a notable lol-meme in-and-of-itself though the image’s reach, even with all the fun that was had (see that video game controller shooped over Obama?), is no where near the reach of the simple idea itself that Bin Laden is dead and gone.
Considering how quickly news does spread in this day and age (i.e. a lot faster than any time before us), I would not be surprised if the news of Bin Ladens’ death reached more people, more quickly, than any news event EVER in the history of Humanity.
THE GREATEST HUMAN MEME OF 2011
Though far reaching with his life and death, Bin Laden was a terrible man and does not get to be the Greatest Human Meme of 2011, IMHO; uninspiring, off-base, horrible, disturbing and doing it wrong. This is nothing of an idea for a human, compared to the ideas of inspiration and greatness fathomed in the collective reflection of the life and work of Steve Jobs. He’s that guy. The man who pushed the world ahead so far, so quickly. He pushed us through the beginning of the information age with personal computers, he spearheaded the digital music and film industries, his products helped the most in enabling and inspiring personal publishing, he reinvented the telephone, tablet computing,and you know, what not.
On Jobs’ battle with cancer, MG Siegler points out the importance of his age and contributions in considering this profound, memetic aspect of his death:
But it didn’t just rob Jobs. It robbed us too. That’s why people who haven’t met the man care so deeply. Not only is his early death a sad story, it takes away a man who will go down as one of the greatest innovators of not only our time, but of any time. And while you could certainly argue that someone like Michael Jackson contributed great art to the world — he did — he hadn’t done anything significant in nearly 20 years at the time of this death. Steve Jobs was in his prime when it came to his trade, when he passed away.”
The news of Steve Jobs’ death was a story that spread incredibly far and deep, transcending everything we have seen in the past with technological fame. What other person from the computer industry has been thought of as much, with so much appreciation, all at once? Referring to the intense outpouring of emotion surrounding Jobs’ death, Siegler went on to note:
This type of global unity tends to happen when a major celebrity passes away — think: Michael Jackson — because nearly everyone on the planet knows who they are. People always look for common bonds, and those are easy ones to establish. That’s because pop culture shoves them in our faces for years if not decades. And the type of fame they achieve goes hand-in-hand with celebrity.
But Steve Jobs was not a celebrity — at least not in the traditional sense. Sure, he was famous, but he did not seek fame. Nor did he need it. The main goal of his career was not to sell his image. He was the head of a company…Jobs is the first truly transformative figure to die in an age of transformative technology. He’s someone who will be talked about a thousand years from now. And the fact that he was transformative in technology just compounds the reactions to his death right now.
President Obama on the Passing of Steve Jobs: “He changed the way each of is sees the world” [link]
Larry Page: “Im very sad to hear the news about Steve.” [link]
Mark Zuckerberg: “Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.” [link]
The tune is so good, and the idea is so bright, Nyan Nyan Cat. Much like a smile, or a war, people on the internet everywhere - people who have seen things - can understand the absurdity of our lives, all together, all at once with Nyan Nyan Cat. My favorite version is the 10 hour long video which boasts over 8 million views alone. See also: Nyan Nyan Cat Man. HONORABLE MENTION for Most Absurd Meme of 2011 (US Version) goes to Charlie Sheen for bringing down boundaries between the fanatic celebrity-ism pop culture world and the real-world as we know it, on Twitter.
Beyond Twitter, Nyan Nyan Cat has been seen by many more people this year, and it’s amazing how many people across the world have participated in the joy and extreme absurdity of this comic meme.
Horsemanning is making the rounds, and it’s a creepy one. When authentically posed, one person hides their head and another person shows their head somewhere else. Over the last week, many people have been inspired by the idea, performing their own versions. It’s undoubtably caused joy and fun for many who have contributed. But.
When I first read about it on Buzzfeed, I was instantly drawn to the notion that the included photo, reportedly from the 1920’s, represented evidence of an antique meme. Here’s what Buzzfeed posted on August 8th:
“Horsmaning,” or fake beheading, was a popular way of taking pictures in the 1920s. It’s currently experiencing a revival and is basically the new planking. Here are some modern day adaptations of this popular new/old photo trend.”
The author was Matt Stopera, a senior editor at Buzzfeed and he doesn’t cite any sources. That should mean this is his scoop, right? Though usually considered wrong, it’s extremely common to propagate other people’s content w/o giving credit, so it’s necessary to remain vigilant and not jump to conclusions. Yet an easy search reveals there are absolutely no relevant mentions of Horsemaning or any recent photo “trends” of the like, prior to Buzzfeed’s post. I contacted Stopera to ask him where he got the photo, and how he knew it was a trend then and now but never got a response.
THE PHOTOS
Look at the “original” photo more closely. What objects in the photo date it? Its a tricky one. I blew it up and tried to notice patterns. I’m not sure about the photo, I wouldn’t be surprised if it really was from the 1920’s but it looks more like the late 60’s or early 70’s to me. But how do we know? And where is other evidence this was a “craze” in the 1920s and that it was a craze again at the time Buzzfeed posted it?
I decided to email one of the amazing folks over at Buzzfeed, previously a KYM and Rocketboom writer and researcher, Mr. Chris Menning, but nary a peep? Hm!
What could I do? I went right to the top: I emailed Jonah Peretti, one of THE masterminds behind Buzzfeed (and the person who first introduced me to the concept of memes back in 2002) and I asked him straight up, what’s up? Was this meme a lie? But all that was returned was mysterious double entendres!?
Setting aside the authenticity of the photo, what about the claim that this was now a popular craze that everyone is doing? Where did Buzzfeed get all of these photos of people doing it?
I had a closer look at the other photos in the post. Something about the background scenery looked familiar - the late 1990’s spaceship landline phone, the primary red couch, the brick walls, the Soho lookin’ city streets - I was starting to wonder…perhaps these photos all came from within and around the Buzzfeed office. A quick search confirmed what I thought I had indeed remembered: Buzzfeed has the same exact model, primary red couch in their office!
I wadded through more citings - the meme was gaining. It seemed like EVRYONE was fixated on the ‘old meme’ story, reporting it as true without question. I must say, I usually don’t get scared when researching meme mechanics, but this was frightening! The web was starting to look like a horror movie, Zombies!
I finally arrived, to my surprise, at a post on this matter from Adren Chen of Gawker. Now, there is no need to read this post. In typical Gawker form, the writer picks up on the right angle but heads down the wrong direction. But with regards to Horsemaning, he did say this: ”Three days ago Buzzfeed, the tireless meme-aggregator, decided to take a stab at creating a meme of its own.” And also in typical Gawker form, this writer was pissed. Really pissed. I had to wonder, how does Gawker know for sure that Buzzfeed manufactured the story any way? Gawker seems angry they didn’t think of it first. But Chen did not give any proof as to how he knows Buzzfeed manufactured the meme, he just states it as a matter of fact. Maybe he’s willing to go out on a limb like me and conclude this is a forced meme, but he writes definitively, like journalists do when they state facts.
Buzzfeed’s response to Gawkers accusation? They didn’t deny it. But as you can see, it wasn’t pretty: In this return fire, it appears the staff was kicking and throwing poor Mr. Chen’s head around the Buzzfeed office. With smiles no less!
THE 3RD PARTIES
Meanwhile, I noticed there are several other layers of seriously sinister activity going on here which tends to be par for the course.
Note that Horsemanning.com,was created on the same day as Buzzfeed’s post and (1) appears to be unaffiliated with anyone or any company (i.e. anonymous), (2) was registered via a proxy business (i.e. anonymous) and (3) includes *a lot* of display advertising (i.e. money, money). But a quick look at the source code reveals the sloppiness that comes from ur typical rush-to-market job: A publisher ID for the site’s advertising account at Google was listed in the code and was thus easily cross referenced as the same publisher who generates ad sales from the website, Randomlyheard.com. Sure enough, whoever is behind this site is what I call a miniutemememan (or miniutememewoman depending on a number of factors) because within in minutes, they will mobilize, motivated by the hope of becoming THE hub of an up-and-coming meme. In this case, it appears Randomlyheard raced for horsemaning.com to stake a claim with some early SEO and cash-in but as you might of noticed, horsemaning.com was already taken so that may explain why the Randomlyheard is promoting the alternate horsemanning spelling (with two N’s) and also linking to the Horsemanning (with two N’s) Facebook page. Randomlyheard writes: ”There is much confusion with the name “Horsemaning” and “Horsemanning”, however the recent push is for “Horsemanning”. I am on the side of Horsemanning, with two N’s and NOT with Horsemaning.” Where are all the confused people, I wondered?
It appears yet another party, Popatato.com, won the facebookget with the horsemaning spelling. Also right on top of it, Popatato was so quick, the site’s own post on the topic has an earlier time stamp than Buzzfeeds (and without citing a source.) I contacted Popatato and they claimed that their post came after Buzzfeeds: Timezone discrepancy. Popatato’s quick turnaround regurgitatation is worth noting because Popatato appears to illustrate the same kind of motivation we see in Randomlyheard’s actions, in that they are both minutememepeople and, along with the Buzzfeed in this case, I believe, untrue. And it appears they all tried so hard to hide from their activity.
As you can imagine, these things happen every day. It’s formula industry. ‘Not sure why they feel they must hide and make things up. There are clever ways to spark the same fun and rewards while being sincere & transparent. Personally, I’m not inspired by forced memes. It’s too easy to come up with a good headline if you can lie about it. Its also a risk to you and especially the community of people you interact with as it breaks down trust. The next time I read a story from any of these sites, I’ll have no choice but wonder if they are making things up or engaged in nefarious activity, motivated ultimately by CPMs and CPCs.
With this meme, watch how it continues to spread even now. The Zombies will likely never understand they have been duped as they proudly confirm the antique quality and authenticity of the craze, further saturating the trails of truth, making meme research hard.
The interesting thing about Charlie Sheen is not so much that he is crazy, but that he chooses to reveal his craziness so freely. Other movie stars who might be plenty crazy have a different approach to knowing when to show themselves, and when not to. When apart of a major production, for example, the typical movie star can be brilliant for acting a certain way, just as that person is being captured with the right lighting, in a great scene, and when written and directed by a cast of many who can bring that star to light for those critical, designed moments that we see. Think Platoon, one of Charlie Sheen’s finest.
But like most talented people who may perform expertly in their trade (no doubt Charlie Sheen is an excellent actor), it does not follow that because they are a great actor, for example, that they are not miserable at other tasks in other fields.
As a result of such a special effort in design, people who get to know these movie stars, get to know them in this ideal fashion where the music can bring out the beauty and awe in idealities and thus, in a way, such movie stars have that benefit of being perceived as great. And in terms of their talent, they may be. Charlie Sheen was considered by many critics to be “great” by many standards in Platoon.
To this end, traditionally, in order to maintain this aurora of greatness, there becomes this tendency to hide their flaws, craziness and normalities. After all, it’s more valuable to remain perfect, OBVIOUSLY!!!1! People seem to expect it anyway.
[note this news was broken a bit earlier than I was prepared for and now it’s spreading and people are wondering whats up with Rocketboom, so I’m still editing this article but wanted to get it out there!]
Today at Rocketboom I’m happy to announce the sale of Know Your Meme to The Cheezburger Network. Cheezburger recently raised $30M and offered a super seven figure deal (I’d like to tell you how much exactly but they wanted to keep that confidential.) Before diving into the sale, I entertained another serious buy-out offer, entertained an offer for investment from a premier investor, and even considered turning it into a “double bottom line” company, but all in all, everyone advised and I agreed that this was by far the best deal to be done (esp. because I was 100% owner of the company with no other investors or partners involved.) When I took the idea to the Know Your Meme staff and got everyone’s complete conviction, I decided to hand it off.
I feel a bit of sellers remorse because I love Know Your Meme so much and I feel proud of having created a business that people love so much. But now, I’ve done what I wanted to do and personally, I get my greatest fulfillment from the innovation process. The framework of the site is now established, successful and able to run on it’s own. In fact, consider that this very valuable property only requires two-full time and two part-time paid staff members to keep the site operational and growing. The rest happens through an incredible community of passionate moderators, editors, researchers and contributors, all there because, like me, they just love the work.
The website traffic has seen tremendous growth recently, now about 3 million unique visitors per month with about 20 Million page views per month. And the community of people on the site is the kind of community most people dream of having, with super-high participation levels with an established voice of integrity and academic rigor.
THE WIKI
When Rocketboom first launched http://knowyourmeme.com in 2007, I put it out there as a wiki for memes, meant to accompany the regular segments inside of our daily Rocketboom programming which I was writing and producing at time. There was actually a need for a place to collaboratively document memes because the two primary platforms of fame each had severe handicaps for this particular field.
The first platform of note, Wikipedia, one of my all time favorite sites, is just too rigid and exclusive for documenting memes. Quite often, the important sources and critical facts are rejected by the elite editors, and the ability for anyone under the sun to come in and hack it up can be way too overboard and frustrating.
The other platform of note, Encyclopedia Dramatica is not a site that is comfortable to be on for most people, unless you are okay with racism and pornography in all of your content, but surprisingly, a lot of people are.
The wiki factor is a super interesting one that most people miss with regards to why Know Your Meme works. Aside form the branded voice which came right out of Rocketboom’s look-and-feel, the platform is kind of a tweak on Wikipedia, technically speaking. KYM is a full fledged, custom CMS built from ground up on Rails and instead of being a free for all, articles are “owned” by just a few researchers (I hate the word “user” BTW) on a first come, first serve basis. As a result, researchers at Know Your Meme feel a sense of ownership and control over the articles.
ADVERTISING
One of the biggest challenges I faced at KYM had to do with advertising. I regularly received inquires from advertisers who wanted to “get in on the memes”, and effect the editorial for their marketing purposes. In order to preserve the integrity of information, I had a formal business policy against this and I never once entertained a deal of this kind, but I noticed they often tried their best as inconspicuous “community members” to accomplish their marketing objectives on their own. Obviously these companies employ people just like you and me who are clever and clued in enough to understand what to do. There are also several cases of memes which I suspect became popular as a result of being created on KYM by advertisers and marketers themselves. There is place for everyone at KYM, its a tricky balance with the editorial nevertheless. Despite what you might expect from any buyer no matter who they are, I am pleased to report that future plans for Know Your Meme will actually focus on maintaining and strengthening the journalistic integrity.
Regarding advertising “around” the content, I can’t help but send a shout out to Henry Copeland of Blogads who was one of the best partners I have ever worked with. Blogads provided us a plug-and-play sustainable and soon-to-be profitable ad solution for the website. If you are ever lucky enough to get Blogads to add you to their exclusive list of clients, you will have found the best display ad revenue and solution I have ever found.
As most people who rely on display advertising know, revenue is not an easy business to crack, even in today’d day and age. Cheezburger is also expert as this business and will no doubt have great success in adapting their model to the Know Your Meme site.
Though surprising to most people who are unfamiliar with the high CPM rates garnered for online video, I think the video program stands to generate 8 to 10x the revenue the site can earn over the same period. Together, it’s a serious win.
THE SHOW
Ah, the show. Explicating memes as academic scientists in lab coats was hit right from start. Though KYM started from within Rocketboom as a segment, it wound up much bigger as a platform. ‘Not sure what will happen to the show, perhaps the original scientists will come back. As for Rocketboom, this is exactly the kind of work we do best and you can be sure there will be plenty more internet culture content to come. Aside from our own programming, Rocketboom has recently established deep partnerships building shows for other partners and networks (you will be hearing a lot about this soon.)
THE STAFF
As custom, I want to thank the Rocketboom and Know Your Meme staves for everything they have done. Especially, I want to thank Barry Pousman and Molly and the rest of the Rocketboom staff Ash Sechler, Ben Cheek, Brantley Jones, Bob Geile, Brad O’Farrell, Demetrius Wren, Ella Morton, Matt Finlin, Matthias Sundberg, Pete Dybdahl, Rob Cokerwho have ALL been *awesome* in sticking this out and remaining gung-ho throughout. Also, as always, a special thanks to Greg Leuch and Chris Menning for their ongoing support. As a result of the sale, I rewarded Rocketboom staff with thousands to tens of thousands of dollars as bonuses. Same for the KYM staff, even though they are all moving on to work for Cheezburger. I’m so happy for Brad Kim, James Wu, Don Caldwell and Olivia Gulin who are the full on go-to meme experts who have moved on happily with the site.
Major thanks also of course to the Cheezburger folks and to my lawyers and everyone who offered advise along the way, especially those true family and friends who offered invaluable inspiration Courtney and Blair, Xeni, Jonah Peretti, Josh Kinburg and an extra major thank you for always providing an invaluable perspective, Dave Winer.
Usually you think of platforms spawning content, though Rocketboom is in a unique position of establishing content which spawns into platforms. Stay tuned for some seriously big news on Humanwire, Magma and more news like the news today which I wish I could discuss already!!
