November 07, 2005

Google Video Search and Chinese Students singing Backstreet Boys

The latest funny video going around the Internet is a video of two Chinese students lip-synching to Backstreet Boys "I Want it that Way." This was the first video I had seen that was shown on Google Video, and everyone in our New York office was crazy about it, so I checked to see what kind of lift in market share, if any, the site had gotten from this event.

The blue line in the chart below shows the market share of visits to Google Video - its market share increased 113% from the week ending October 22, 2005 to the week ending October 29, 2005, an astounding increase for one week. If you didn't notice, there is a convenient link on the video page saying "Send link" which allows you to send it to your friends. The orange line on the chart shows the upstream visits from Internet email services to Google Video. They have increased rapidly in recent weeks to 32% of upstream visits, and while we can't say that they were specifically from the video of the Chinese students, obviously Google Video is gaining a significant amount of visitors from this and other viral videos that may be going around, like this one.

Google Video has also been getting some press coverage, and on October 26 announced that it had posted complete interviews from the Archive of American Television. The green line shows Google Video's upstream traffic from News & Media websites (which included Google News), which have also increased significantly in recent weeks. The jump in visits to Google Video during the week ending October 1, 2005 may have been due to the posting of the season premiere of Chris Rock's show "Everybody Hates Chris."

It appears that it's combination of luck and design that Google Video is taking off after all these events. Obviously they are trying to attract this type of viral traffic by making it easy for users to upload content. Google does have some catching up to do, as Yahoo! Video Search received 4 times greater market share of visits than Google Video for the week ending October 29, 2005. A "video" link above the search box on the Google homepage would help. Incidentally, if you try a search for "BSB I want it that way" on Yahoo! Video, you get a result that shows the same boys, in different outfits, singing a different Backstreet Boys song. It's not nearly as funny.

Thanks to my NY colleague Sophie Lilley for forwarding me the original video.

Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 01:57 PM
Posted to General Thought Leadership

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