About Viral

Minor Case of the Flu Viral

In the earlier post Understanding Videos: Production Vs Distribution we described the nature of a flu viral to some degree.  A flu viral can grip a niche market like any common cold and be gone just as fast.  Using the example of the streaker at the Blue Jays game from the earlier post we can see a very mild display of their statistical nature.  

Source: McDirtyD's YouTube Insights

This video has about 30 000 views and represents the image of a typical flu viral with extremely low reoccurrences in substantial views.  Naturally, when “Blue Jays home opener” is searched the clip makes its way up the Google/YouTube search ranking and gets a little attention but nothing to spark panic.  For the northern hemisphere it’s like when spring is starting to come and the sun causes everyone to think it will be warmer out therefore we can wear less clothes.  This of course is not the case and the common cold starts to make its round.

A true flu viral would be upwards of 100 000 views to 500 000.  Major political announcements or world events are common to this category.  All it takes is a few instinctive and curious people to start to ball rolling and a news event will take off.  People flock to see the footage but once they’ve seen it, they know and there is really no need to continue watching it again and again.  People in related industries will share it due to their proximity to the subject but it’s nothing to start an addictive epidemic.  

For example recently we saw these two videos take hold. 

Turkish Plane Crash

Hudson Bay Plane Crash (arguably is now pushing past flu viral status)

Cheers!