About Viral

Did You Know Emerges as a Sleeper Viral

Did You Know is a perfect example of a Sleeper Viral.  The video wasn’t designed to sell a product and had no major promotion behind its spread.  The video is simply interesting enough to catch people’s attention and slowly but surely hit a tipping point launching it to a famed 6.5 million view status it holds today (Viral Video Chart). 

The leading video was uploaded to amybethhale’s channel on Oct. 21st 2008 and sat quietly for months with minor incremental views.  We first saw it in an email early that fall as the virus had not yet taken hold but was clearly spreading as the email was addressed to this sneezer’s entire contact list.

Source: Amybeth's YouTube Insights

The beginning of 2009 marked a steady increase for this particular video increasing daily all the way through February as well.  Finally, its daily views peaked in March reaching up to about 70k a day.  This comes from Amybeth Hale’s YouTube insights as she held the channel with the leading video accounting for 4.5 million of the total views.  Her insights also tell us that this increase in views was predominantly because the United States finally picked up the contagious piece of media.     

From the post Understanding Viral Videos: Production Vs Distribution the description of a sleeper viral can be explained and mapped out via the increase in popularity as it spread through various audiences and delivery systems.

The research and assembly that was done by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman to create this video provides a clear glimpse at what exceptional content can do by itself. 

Cheers!