With videos of shivering people flooding social feeds around the world, it’s safe to call this the summer of the Ice Bucket Challenge. And what a summer it was: we saw epic stunts, epic fails, quirky twists and a whole lot of celebrities. We learned a lot about the strange connections between famous people (Bill Gates knows Ryan Seacrest?). The IBC craze even resulted in a couple of marriage proposals. And it’s all in the name of charity: on September 7, the ALS Foundation reported more than $110 million in Ice Bucket Challenge donations.
The meme hit another major milestone this week, too: Ice Bucket Challenge videos have been watched on YouTube more than a billion times. That, combined with the volume of uploads, makes it one of the biggest video memes in the history of the Internet. Yeah, it’s that big.
The trend is also international. People from more than 150 countries have now posted "Ice Bucket" videos on YouTube, and "Ice Bucket Challenge" is August's top rising YouTube search globally. While 90 percent of videos came from the U.S. in the early days of the trend, within two weeks, the majority of IBC videos were uploaded from outside the U.S.:
As a charitable phenomenon, the Ice Bucket Challenge unprecedented in the history of YouTube. As a collaborative, participatory meme, it has a lot in common with last year’s explosive Harlem Shake. But it’s actually even bigger than Harlem Shake at its onset. In the first month after these memes took off, IBC has about double the uploads and three times as many views compared to the Harlem Shake.
Want to relive all the icy magic? Here are the most-watched IBC videos, ranked by views:
Whether you've just heard it or you've been hearing it for months, Carly Rae Jepsen's hit single seems here to stay. The video for "Call Me Maybe" is currently #1 on YouTube's music chart and has picked up over 100 million views. The online spread of the song has helped it become one of YouTube's top rising searches this year.
Below you can view the weekly search interest in "Call Me Maybe," which has continued to rise since February and is still growing.
The song -- which many people were first exposed to via a lip-sync fan video featuring Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Ashley Tishdale, and others -- has inspired all sorts of creativity and reaction that have served only to broaden its spread.
Today we celebrate YouTube's 7th Birthday, and in honor of this occasion, we dug into the data to see what we could find about how people celebrate birthdays via web video.
In the average week, nearly 10,000 "happy birthday" (English) videos are posted to YouTube.When you include the terms for "happy birthday" in Spanish, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, French, and a few other languages, that number jumps to just over 15,000, meaning that there are over 2,000 posted each day.
Many these videos have been seen over 100,000 times. Here's just one of them:
Birthday searches are consistent throughout the year, with "wishes," "song," and "quote" being popular related terms. People & Blogs is the most-common category for "happy birthday" videos followed by Entertainment and then Music.
This post was authored by Will Goodman, managing editor of CBSNews.com's The Feed, for a YouTube Trends series exploring viral video phenomena.
If we’ve learned anything from watching “The Partridge Family” growing up, it’s that the family that sings together, stays together. Okay, so if you’re like me you probably didn’t watch the actual show growing up and may have simply caught the occasional rerun episode on Nickelodeon. And, yes, they were actors and not a real family, but that doesn’t mean the lesson doesn’t ring true. Just look what’s happening on YouTube.
This video of Dicken Schrader and his two children, Milah and Korben, accompanying him in an amazing cover of Depeche Mode’s “Everything Counts” is just the most recent example of what is becoming a hit-maker online – families coming together to perform covers on YouTube. But like any trend you have to try and hone in on where it all began. In this case, it really can be pinpointed to one major and easily recognizable moment...
It's a trend that's been going on for more than a month, but in the past week or so, we've seen the "Stuff ___ Say" trend has seen a new shift in style and popularity. Whereas initially the trend was focused on demographics and other cultural criteria -- race, gender, interests, clubs -- we've started to see way more localized versions popping up in YouTube's trending video feeds.
For example, in the past few days we've seen from a number of cities across the United States. These are among the estimated several thousand videos that exist as a part of this trend.
(Note: Some contain adult language)
Los Angeles
Minnesota
Toronto
Silicon Valley
San Francisco
Washington
Miami
Chicago
These are just a few, and you've probably seen ones for other cities floating around (drop them in the comments!). California seems to be particularly well represented, and the New York take, which first went viral last week, has been seen upwards of 2.6 million times.
Whether you've been spending lots of time on YouTube or checking out your social media feeds, one video trend seems to be completely inescapable in 2012: the "S*** __ Say" trend.
It's one that started back in 2011, with the "S*** Girls Say" series, which launched on December 12th. Episode one, below, has over 10 million views and overall the videos on the channel have over 17 million total views.
The series was so popular -- and simple in concept -- that it spawned all manner of parodies and remakes. We can now estimate that there are well over 500 instances of these videos on YouTube from the past month.
The topics vary from ethnicity to career to other social commentaries. Some people have been using them to promote their businesses as well. The playlist below contains a handful of diverse examples, some popular, some controversial.
(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)
The most recent hit in the trend has been "S*** Nobody Says," a natural evolution that's now been seen close to 2 million times in the past week.
Ben Breedlove, a young man from Texas, captured the attention of millions of people around the world last week. The teenager, who suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and said he had "cheated death" on three occasions, passed away on Christmas day and left a history and personal message on YouTube.
Breedlove is YouTube's top rising search, globally, of the past 7 days thanks to the heartbreaking videos he posted just before his untimely passing.
Like a lot of talented young people, he had a YouTube channel -- two actually -- breedlovetv and OurAdvice4You, which he used to shared his advice and thoughts with the world. Videos on those channels had been seen 4.7 million times before the 25th. A third, TotalRandomness512, was used to house the two "This is My Story" videos above, which have already been seen well over 6 million times.
In the past week, over 1,000 videos tagged with his name, many of them personal tributes and remembrances, have been posted to YouTube. His memorial service was a also a spiking search over the weekend.
The style of Breedlove's videos is not new, but had a strong emotional impact. Below is a playlist with a selection of tributes, using the same visual reference:
Today marks the start of December, which means that everyone who grew facial hair for charities focusing on men's health.
We've been seeing hundreds of "Movember-ending" videos posted in the past 24 hours in which men of all ages have filmed themselves shaving off their 'staches, beards, and goatees:
(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)
Rather expectedly, we're also seeing mustache time-lapses from the more photographically dedicated:
This post was authored by Will Goodman, managing editor of CBSNews.com's The Feed, for a YouTube Trends series exploring viral video phenomena.
It's a big wide world out there. So many sites to see and people to meet. While I would recommend everyone take some time to travel and experience it for himself or herself, let's be honest: we can't all drop everything and go to Morocco. Luckily, YouTube offers us all a unique modern opportunity to take in many of these sights and sounds vicariously.
We take a trip to Turkey for our first example of the globe-trotting travel videos. What really stands out about this first video is it takes something so seemingly common as a person purchasing ice cream and transforms it into a wondrous performance. And it’s far from the only one you can find on YouTube. Just type in“Turkish Ice Cream” and you will discover a whole genre of just this particular type of showmanship in action.
And where showmanship was on display in the previous video, now we get a display of pure skill. Take something as mundane as serving up cakes to customers and see what can happen when a certain level of speed and skill are applied. This time there is no real performance by the person on display, simply someone doing their job at a level of speed and skill that is amazing to behold. If for some reason they ever did create a cake serving competition in the Olympics, I would bet money this woman would take the gold.
So where we started with showmanship and then transitioned into skill, now we’re focusing on the subject of craftsmanship. There is something hypnotizing about watching the creation of a single chess piece by hand in this video.
There are few things stranger to see than a baby enjoying to some heavy metal, but that combo has created a few trending hits this year (see: How to Calm a Baby) as well as in the past.
The video below -- which was featured on Trends Wednesday morning -- has picked up over 400,000 views and is one of our top Most Shared videos in the United States. Considering the fact that similar videos of little kids rocking out have drawn big audiences in the past, it's not surprising to see this one take off. Below we pulled together some of the all-time top trending videos of this very amusing phenomenon.
Warning: Some adult language.
(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)
Spreading quickly on Reddit today is this video posted by a traveler from the United Kingdom, which purports to show luggage that was severely tampered with. According to Gawker, which also picked up the story after it began drawing attention on Reddit, the man, Sy Haze explains that, "Apparently someone had urinated on his clothes, squirted toothpaste all over his toiletry bag, and made off with a bottle of aftershave."
The video is part of a longtime trend of combining web video and social media to voice serious consumer complaints, particularly regarding large corporations like the airlines.
Back in October, YouTube announced that the subscribe button had been clicked one billion times since it first debuted in 2006. At the time, there were 15 channels that had over 1 million subscribers.
Since then, one of those channels hit 3 million, and several others crossed joined that original 15 bringing the "million+ subscriber club" to a total of 35 channels.
Yesterday, Google's homepage doodle was an interactive image of a guitar celebrating the birthday of Les Paul. Many musically inclined YouTuber users began recording videos of themselves playing a variety of tunes on it and sharing them around.
Over 30 of these videos already have over 10,000 views, and there seem to be thousands uploaded. Below is a selection of the most popular ones, ranging from "Stairway to Heaven" to the Indian National Anthem:
(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)
But it's not just anonymous screencasts. Tom Morello, best known for being the guitar player for Rage Against the Machine, also posted one:
The top rising search on YouTube this afternoon is for "Macho Man Randy Savage" who reportedly passed away in a car accident earlier today. Slim Jim commercials aside, searches for some of his most famous matches are among the top related terms.
The WWE has a number of classic clips posted on its channel of Savage in his prime:
But we're also seeing a large number of reaction/tribute videos being posted to the site by fans of all ages. Hundreds of videos related to the famous wrestler have been uploaded today.
Many discuss his most classic matches and rivalries as well as the quirky place he held as a pop culture personality. Here are two examples of the many that have been posted:
Flash mobs -- when a group of people appear in one location unexpectedly and usually put on some sort of rehearsed performance -- have practically become a staple of YouTube in recent years.
According to our YouTube search data, big interest in the term "flash mob" started to rise in mid-2009 and remained steady until last December, when it hit a huge peak around the holiday season's most popular trend. Since we're still seeing new flash mobs appear each week, we thought we'd review which flash mobs were the most-viewed ever. These 10 run the gamut of style, size, and language, but they're all pretty entertaining:
(May take a moment to load. Watch the full playlist here.)
Today marks the one year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, and "haiti earthquake" is among our top spiking search terms today. In the past 7 days, nearly 4,000 Haiti-related videos have been posted to the site (over 1,000 in the past 24 hours).
Disney actress, singer, and UNICEF ambassador Selena Gomez posted the most-viewed clip so far, advocating for the charity's efforts in Haiti. (The message she posted a year ago went on to draw over 600,000 views.)
In the playlist below, we've collected a few of the many videos posted in the past few days to our "People & Blogs" category. The videos depict thee breadth of relief efforts taking place on the smaller scale, varying from a little boy in the U.S. who's been saving up for a donation to footage from service trips in villages on the ground. They also show some of the different fundraising strategies being employed on YouTube at this time:
This week, Ryan Higa became the first YouTube creator to hit 3 million subscribers on the site. His path to three million dates all the way back to July of 2007, when Higa posted How to Be a Ninja, a clip that's been viewed over 25 million times. Compare that below to the 35 minute film he starred in and posted in late November:
Interestingly, though "How to Be a Ninja" came out over three years ago, Higa has posted 75 videos to his channel, the least of any creator in the subscriber top 10 save Annoying Orange, which only launched this year. But his top five videos alone have generated nearly 100 million views.
Looking back at the subscription data, you can see Higa's been able to maintain consistent subscription levels for well over a year, leading up to the big 3-0-0-0-0-0-0.
YouTuber the vlogbrothers kicked of the 2010 version of their "Project for Awesome" this afternoon, where fellow videomakers create videos to raise awareness for charities and causes.
We put together a play lists of some of the videos featured by the p4a so far so you can see what's going on with that community-driven effort: