When Comedy Central announced that South African comedian Trevor Noah would succeed Jon Stewart as the host of “The Daily Show,” the world scratched its collective head. Who is this guy and what makes him qualified to follow the larger-than-life personality of Stewart?
In a matter of hours, search interest on both Google and YouTube for “Trevor Noah” skyrocketed. Compared to the previous day – Sunday, March 29 – search volume increased 2157% day-over-day on YouTube as people around the world sought to learn more about the unknown Noah.
While millions were hearing Noah’s name for the first time, the comedian’s long history on YouTube demonstrates that he has, in fact, engrossed a global audience with his unique humor and life perspective for years. As the mixed-race son of a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, Trevor developed an uncanny ability to perceive and articulate nuanced social issues at a unique time in a unique place.
In the 2012 documentary about his rise in South African comedy, You Laugh But It’s True, Noah explains how his personal experiences shaped his comedy: “I’ve lived a life where I’ve never really fit in, in any particular way. Even now people still debate what I am…. When you get older it’s cool because you’ve lived everywhere and nowhere. You’ve been everyone and no one. So you can say everything and nothing. And that’s really what affects my comedy and everything that I say.”
Noah's first major release on YouTube was of his first comedy special, The Daywalker, in 2009. Since that year, videos about “Trevor Noah” (uploads with references to his name in their title, description and keywords) have grown dramatically every year, increasing by 265% from 2013 to 2014.
Among these videos, 12 have earned more than 1 million views, including 9 from his own channel which includes highlight clips from his standup performances and other projects. Noah’s global popularity began growing in 2012, when clips of his “Crazy Normal” special started spreading on YouTube. Since then he has successfully increased his reach every year by performing live shows and releasing new clips from those performances, most notably with “It’s My Culture” in early 2014. This strategy allowed Noah to reach new people with new content while driving additional views to his back catalogue of earlier videos.
Now that the announcement has brought him to the forefront of global popular culture, people are turning to YouTube to learn more about Trevor Noah. In the two days of March following Monday’s announcement, uploads and views related to him more than doubled the totals accumulated during the prior 29 days of the month. Considering these statistics, and Noah’s long history with comedy, the news of him succeeding Stewart seems a little less surprising. This week may have been the first time many of us heard the name Trevor Noah, but it won't likely be the last.
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:
If YouTube popularity can determine who’ll win in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie, your views and uploads put Batman as the clear winner. Based on keyword searches, Batman is the most popular of all superheroes on YouTube, with more than 3 billion views of 71,000 hours of video. Following Batman is Thor, Superman, Iron Man, The Avengers, and Wolverine -- the rest of the list is below. Collectively, the top 10 superheroes alone account for more than 10 billion views and 234,000 hours of video.
Superhero(es)
Views
Hours of video
Batman
3,000,000,000
71,000
Thor
2,100,000,000
66,000
Superman
1,700,000,000
14,000
Iron Man
1,400,000000
20,000
The Avengers
1,000,000,000
31,000
Wolverine
540,000,000
7,800
Spider Man
340,000,000
7,400
Captain America
280,000,000
4,900
Justice League
220,000,000
3,200
Deadpool
200,000,000
8,900
While Batman also takes the top overall spot for searches, the Dark Knight has been overtaken in searches by Thor, Iron Man and The Avengers since 2008.
The top videos for each superhero are a mix of popular movie trailers, video game play, fan originals and more - check the playlist of the top 10 here:
In anticipation of this summer’s biggest blockbuster films, the world watched trailers for The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Risesover 100 million times. With all of the fanfare surrounding these superheros, we wondered who would win if they squared off against each other in a good old fashioned popularity contest. Would Gotham’s hero rise against the amazing webslinger? Would Peter Parker get the best of Bruce Wayne?
We found some really interesting data when we looked at global searches for “Spiderman” and “Batman” videos in the weeks leading up to each film’s box office debut. See the graphs below to discover which superhero was the most popular among fans.
Global searches for “Spiderman” (red) snuck ahead of “Batman” (blue) by just a bit when The Amazing Spider-Man hit theaters on July 3. But search interest in the caped crusader significantly overtook Spidey after The Dark Knight Rises premiered on the July 20.
India is the only country where "Spiderman" drew more search interest than "Batman" -- and that’s likely due to Bollywood star Irrfan Khan’s role as Dr. Ratha.
So there it is - Batman wins over Spider-Man. But if the data doesn't do it for you, here's extremely rare footage of the two superheroes duking it out for all to see.
It's a video that's now been viewed 8 million times: Sophia Grace Brownlee, a young girl from the United Kingdom, delivering one of the most memorable covers of Nicki Minaj's hit single "Super Bass". The clip, which was posted Sept 19, first began to take off last Tuesday -- when it started spreading via social media -- and was seen 1.6 million times on Sunday alone.
You can see the video's popularity charted out below.
(Minaj's original video has been seen 158 million times since it came out in May and remains in the top 5 of YouTube's weekly charts.)
This week, the young girl appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" on Wednesday, where she had a surprise meeting with Minaj even performed a duet. Quickly after, searches for the videos hit our top rising search list where they remained into today. This afternoon, the full video of their meeting and duet performance were the Most Shared and Most Viewed videos in the United States.
It was just last Thursday night that United States' edition of "The X Factor" aired the audition of Chris Rene, and in the few days since, interest on YouTube has been very high in the 28-year-old. Rene, 70 days sober post-rehab, performed a self-written song called, "Young Homie."
"Chris Rene" is the top rising search in the U.S. over the past seven days and, interestingly, searches hit their highest peak on Monday. The video of Rene's performance, which was posted by "The X Factor," has been seen over 2.6 million times and is averaging over a quarter of a million views per day.
Even though the episode is less than a week old, YouTube musicians have already begun posting covers of the song. Here's a selection of five in a playlist:
The DisneyParks channel, described as an official outlet "celebrating the magical experiences made possible at...Disney vacation destinations," has been on YouTube for years, but in the past year or so, some of the creative work posted has drawn some big audiences. The channel has 25 million views overall, with almost 10 million in 2011.
Of note is the fact that the three most-viewed videos on the channel capitalize on some popular trends that have been a part of YouTube. The top video (below) was posted back in 2009 and combined two heavily-viewed forms of videos: flash mobs and marriage proposals. It may be not the first proposal they've posted but it was the most successful clip overall with 4 million views.
In addition to posting interesting time-lapse videos (another popular format), DisneyParks has also produced a number of tilt-shift videos like the one below that has nearly a million views. (See: 10 of the Most Popular Tilt-Shift Videos.)
Earlier this Summer, a new video hit YouTube starring a pop-culture icon who has quite a large fan-base on the site. That video already has 1.3 million views thanks in part to the Star Wars crowd.
This post was authored by Michelle Castillo as a part of a YouTube Trends series exploring the videos being watched this week by the team at What's Trending.
The human body never ceases to amaze us. The latest marvel that has been piquing our interest is the new show promo for “Whisker Wars,” which shows of the sport of extreme bearding. If people can spend time and energy working on their fitness, why can’t a few gentleman cultivate their facial hair.
Curious to see the other amazing things the human body can do? Check out our collection of human feats that have been captured on YouTube.
This post was authored by Michelle Castillo as a part of a YouTube Trends series exploring the videos being watched this week by the team at What's Trending.
The human body is an amazing machine, but when humans act like machines we can accomplish so much more. (Well, that point can be argued, but I’d like to think so.)
In this clip for the 2011 Animation Block Party Film Festival in New York City, pedestrians become a human pinball machine and take over the streets. This “bumper” (no pun intended) was the final score for the event.
Here are some more amazing clips of people power. When we work together we can achieve anything.
It’s been a big summer for the Marines on YouTube, since Sergeant Scott Moore, currently stationed in Afghanistan, asked Mila Kunis to his Marine Corps Ball in Greenville, North Carolina.
Moore’s YouTube invitation has received over 3.3 million views to date and after much “will she or won’t she” speculation, it looks like Kunis will be taking Moore up on his offer.
Now Marines across the country are trying their luck with Hollywood’s top celebs. Kunis’s co-star, Justin Timberlake has accepted an invite to a similar ball, while Golden Girl Betty White turned down Sergeant Ray Lewis for an October Marine gala.
On Tuesday, Terminator star Linda Hamilton turned the tables and said she would go with Lewis to the ball in lieu of White. This video makes YouTube’s trending list this week.
This week, PFC Hart who is stationed at Camp Pendleton in California, also joined the fray by asking Miley Cyrus to be his date for his upcoming Marine ball. Here’s his video:
HBO's Game of Thrones, might have ended its season late last month, but the show has some rabid fans already -- as evidenced by the videos below -- and some GoT-related videos have continued to be popular into July.
Most notably, we've seen a number of creative takes on the show's theme song from musicians of all kinds on YouTube, ranging instruments from the violin to 8-bit Nintendo-esque sounds.
Here's the original for comparison:
And here's a selection of fan-made covers that've popped up this week as well as over the show's run:
(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)
18-year-old actress and singer Selena Gomez has drawn a lot of interest on YouTube for some time, but in the past few weeks, searches for videos involving the young star have spiked (see chart below). Last week, she released her latest album, appeared for a live-streamed interview on YouTube, and had an amusing behind-the-scenes moment, all of which contributed.
The top rising searches related to Gomez over the past few days were for backstage video of her flustered encounter with actor Shia LaBeouf, which has been viewed over 5.9 million times since it was posted last Tuesday.
Overall, many of the searches are tied to her music video "Love You Like A Love Song," which was posted June 21 and has been viewed over 10 million times.
(May take a moment to load.)
Gomez has been very active on YouTube for years. Videos on her personal channel have been seen over 230 million times.
A popular video late this week was this news clip of the new bridge in Qingdao, China that's described as the world's longest across seawater. Being that it's a long holiday weekend in the United States, we got curious to know more about YouTube's "longest" videos.
We're not looking at the literal longest videos -- though if you're interested, here's 3.5 hours of Nyan Cat. Instead, we looked into YouTube's data to pull a few of the most-viewed videos of things, actions, and events that were described as "the longest ___."
This post was authored by Michelle Castillo as a part of a YouTube Trends series exploring the videos being watched this week by the team at What's Trending.
If you’re anything like me, you love getting a cheap thrill by watching scary movies and clips online. One of this week’s most popular viral videos, the trailer for the remake of Straw Dogs, is just that: a terrifying thriller that will make you never want to be home alone again. Well, at least in the south.
Here are some other clips that have rattled our bones in the past. Just because it’s not Halloween doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a little fright.
This post was authored by Michelle Castillo as a part of a YouTube Trends series exploring the videos being watched this week by the team at What's Trending.
In honor of reaching uberstardom status on YouTube, the guys and gals behind The Yogscast released an animated pirate-themed music video that has already received 615,965 since it was posted two days ago. The video was made in collaboration with Reckreations, and you can't help but admit that the song is really catchy.
Here's some other ridiculously cool animated YouTube videos that you should check out.
For years, celebrities have used YouTube as a platform to connect with fans, and in recent weeks, a few big name stars have been drawing interest with their personal vlogs. Actress Nicole Kidman is the most recent, posting a clip addressing her fans from an HBO set, saying that it's the first of more to come:
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has been posting his "from the desk of Donald Trump" vlogs since February, but his two most popular videos -- a response to his pizza meal with Sarah Palin and his thoughts on Anthony Weiner, respectively -- were posted in just the past two weeks.
Maria Shriver, who has a number of clips from the past few months, posted a video back in March asking fans for their thoughts on life transitions. It suddenly saw a huge spike in attention in May when she and former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger went public with their separation:
Three very different celebrities for sure, but each seem to have enough star-power to make fans take notice.
FOX's "Glee" may be on summer hiatus, but fans of the show still have some fun videos to enjoy. A clip of a young fan mimicing the performance of "Teenage Dream" by ficitional a cappella group the "Dalton Academy Warblers" from the show has has been spreading on Twitter -- and has begun appearing on blogs -- since it was shared by "Glee" cast member (and Warbler) Telly Leung, who wrote, "Amazing! This kid has me fearing for my job."
The original version of the performance, which aired last November, is available on YouTube and has been seen over 22 million times since it was posted and is the second most-viewed video on the official "Glee" channel. Searches for "Glee" on YouTube have continued to climb in the past year, hitting their peak in May. In 2010, the top rising "Glee"-related search was for the "Teenage Dream" performance.
At posting, the "Mini Warbler," who performs the full choreography from the original, still has a small number of views, but it will be interesting to see where it goes from here given the popularity of the original and the show's growing fan-base:
You've likely seen his face here on Trends or in your social media feeds and his lip-synching skills are among the most widely known on YouTube. Last September, then-15-year-old Keenan Cahill posted a dubbed version of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" that became the Most Shared video of 2010.
Since that clip first became popular, his videos have been viewed one-quarter of a billion times. This month, he's averaged over 3 million views per week. Perry, whose tweet got the ball rolling, even made a video wishing him a happy birthday.
While he started with some simple lip-dubs, Cahill soon caught the attention of major celebrities who started appearing in his videos. It started with 50 Cent. Last week, Britney Spears briefly appeared in one. In January, Cahill's videos were viewed nearly 5 million times in just one day after his collab with DJ/producer David Guetta was posted.
Below we've pulled together the 10 most-viewed Keenan Cahill "duets" since last November:
(*Combined views. May take a moment to load in full.)
Slow motion videos have existed on YouTube for a while, and over the years we've seen more and more filmmaker fans of the format posting their work on the site. We went into the YouTube data to identify 10 of the most-viewed "slow motion" videos of the past year in the chart below.
Interestingly, two of the top 10 we pulled -- one from the very popular Slo Mo Guys and one from Modernist Cuisine, just got popular last week.
(May take a moment to load. We only included one video for each user, even if they had uploaded more than one very popular one.)
Tilt-shift videography, where the lens is manipulated to create a model-like effect on the subject, has been very popular among some YouTube circles for some time now, but a look at YouTube's search data shows that relative search interest in "tilt shift" has been steadily on the rise since late 2008, hitting its largest peak just last month.
Disney has found a lot of success with the medium, drawing over a million views for their tilt-shift shorts. The miniaturizing effect accomplished with the tilt-shift style lends itself incredibly well to the whimsical architecture and atmosphere at the Walt Disney Theme Parks. Photographer Keith Loutit's works are probably best known and the most closely identified with the style.
These popular videos have inspired lots of other would-be short filmmakers. One of the most popular tilt-shift related videos is actually a how-to and number of photographers and graphic artists have posted instructional videos on how to achieve the effect.
Below we've collected 10 of the most popular tilt-shift videos of all time on YouTube. Have other favorites we missed? Drop them in the comments below!