YouTube Comments: Epic Fails

Maybe I should have included the words "Epic Fail" into the title of my YouTube videos. I might have at least gotten some more traffic that way, and maybe another comment or two.

This project proved to be very difficult for me. Going in, I thought that I had the creative capacity to make an entertaining video that would garner plenty of comments. Once it came time to make the videos, I had no clue what I was doing. I knew that I wanted to sing, but I also wanted to try and do something a little wacky.

I didn't initially know how to go about marketing my two videos. I put them both on my Facebook page more than a few times, begging people for comments. I put them on Twitter, but because I only have 15 followers they didn't circulate very widely. One of my friends put them on his Twitter, but it didn't seem like any of his 100+ followers watched the videos or commented.

I put the videos on Digg, and the only one viewing them from that site was me. I tried to embed the videos on other YouTube videos in the comment wall, but that was way too complicated for me. In the end, I received about 6 or 7 comments on each of my videos, and I responded to some of them but got no response back.

The biggest problem I noticed was none of my friends wanted to take the time to make a YouTube account. They would comment right on my Facebook page. At least four or five people told me this. I had a comment stream of about eight people in one day right on my Facebook wall, but none of them went to the actual video to do it. Nobody other than friends or people from class commented either.

Another problem I think I created for myself was the titles of my videos. I wanted to put the word "Ginger" somewhere in one of them because who doesn't love a good ginger video now-a-days. I became too embarrassed to leave it up, so I changed Ginger to Me. The title was far too long for anyone to find in a random YouTube search, and that hurt me .

If I could go back and change some of my strategies, I definitely would. I think that my efforts resulted in an epic fail.

Yelp, I Need Somebody...

I decided to review two eateries that I had just recently visited. The first was Bub's BBQ and the second was Pasta e Basta, both fine establishments that received glowing reviews.

I think that Yelp is a cool concept, but only if you go out a lot. The problem with me is that I am a hermit. I am not actively looking for cool new places to go eat or hang out. My budget certainly doesn't help this problem either. It translates more to fast food.

The one problem I have with Yelp is that it seems really impersonal. I don't know if I am old fashioned, but I just don't know how much I trust the opinion of a stranger online about a potential lunch/dinner selection. I would rather hear this coming from somebody that I know and trust instead of Lisa D., a food-porn addict from New York City.

I understand that there are friend applications available on this website, but I don't know that I would want to start being somebody's online friend solely because we like the same restaurant. This isn't like being a Facebook friend. And how often would you be checking in on it? It is just overkill to me. I already have my Facebook that I check religiously, I don't need another one.

It just is very foreign to me. Maybe it is because I am a hermit and am scared of change, but I am going to resist it for now. Yelp just doesn't cut it for me, but I won't bad mouth it for users like April G., who is definitely in the top three good-looking girls on the street.

I "Digg" It

I had first heard about Digg because I read Sports Illustrated.com. The website uses Digg to rank stories by their writers and other sports stories from around the country. I didn't really look into it that much, because I have pretty picky tastes when it comes to sports.

I should have taken the time to look into it a bit more, because using it for the past week was pretty freaking awesome.

The first thing that I did on Digg was put up the two videos that I made from class. I was expecting to receive some sort of increase in views and/or comments because of this, but that didn't happen. It seemed like the only person that viewed my videos was me. That didn't stop me from checking out other really interesting things, though.

One of the coolest things that I saw over the week was this video of an Australian comedy act called Axis of Awesome. They proved that most if not all of the famous pop songs use only four chords. I didn't believe it, so I had to check it out. Sure enough, a whole lot of songs used the same four chords. I was amazed, and they probably could have gone on for a lot longer with more examples. They must have gone through nearly 50 songs, and it was actually pretty funny.

Since I am a big sports guy, I wanted to check out what people were Digging in the sports world. One of the best ones from this week was of a five-year-old baseball player named Ariel Antigua. This kid could hit a fastball at 85-MPH, field grounders like Omar Vizquel, and even had a sweet pitching motion. My jaw dropped. This kid has more talent at five than I did ever. I will be following this youngster all the way through little league, high school, and whenever he signs with the Yankees thanks to Digg.

I didn't comment on that many things during the week. It seemed like it was enough just to Digg it. Commenting on top of that just seemed redundant. I saw a couple of things thrown up today that I commented on. The first was an infograph that shows how California could profit from the legalization of marijuana. I thought that the graph made a lot of sense. There certainly are a lot of cons against the legalization of this drug, and a lot of people were commenting that increased costs of DUI's and health care weren't taken into account. I just commented that the two biggest killers, alcohol and cigarettes, are both perfectly legal. This would just be another one. As of right now, my comment was dug four times. I was pretty excited that others shared the same sentiment.

The other story I commented on was about an American climber who climbed 13,000 feet without any safety equipment and then jumped off with nothing but a tiny parachute. The story made me feel like a complete wimp. This guy is a total beast. The pictures made me feel so weak and insignificant, and the video that accompanied the story was just unreal to watch. The comments were pretty insignificant, so I just threw out and insignificant one as well. It seemed cool enough to write about how manly this guy was.

It is interesting how certain stories get popular and others don't. I probably timed my posts poorly, putting them up late one night and taking away any chance they had of getting views. I put one of my videos in the "Offbeat" category, and one in the "Music" category. I really don't see how some of the offbeat ones were more offbeat than mine. It might be all about timing, but it is probably more about luck and what you call it. "Afternoon Delight in a Robe" doesn't exactly scream "WATCH ME!"

I think that having used it this week, I will continue to use it. I am going to try and put the widget in my out-of-school blog and maybe try to gain more readership that way. It is worth a shot to try and extend my audience, and maybe if I just keep bombarding the website with links and posts, they will have no choice but to Digg some of them! I think that it could really help my blog get off the ground, not that I want to do anything long-term with it. It would be nice if someone other than my parents read it.

I will end it with the favorite thing that popped up this week: a new Old Spice Body Wash commercial. I love Old Spice commercials. I think that they are hysterical. This one was so over the top, and I loved every second of it.

Second YouTube Video

So I really couldn't make my mind up as to what I wanted my video to be. I ended up making another one to compete with my first try, and here it is. It is a little sillier.

YouTube: Digital Media and Society Series

I thought that this book was an interesting read. It was a bit dry at times, but that was the tone that the book needed. If it was a book about viral videos, it could have a more playful tone, but no. This book was about YouTube as an entity, and it did a good job describing all of the different aspects of YouTube.

Despite the dry nature, the book did get me to think about a lot of things I normally overlook when I use YouTube. In chapter 5, it talks about YouTube being an "Accidental Archive of Culture," cataloging moments from different eras and storing them for later reminiscing. I look back on things from the 90s/early 2000s all of the time, but never realize just how much culture YouTube is actually "preserving," in a sense of the word. The book opened me up to simple ideas such as this that I wouldn't have normally thought about.

It is also interesting to look at the future of YouTube. The book notes how the website didn't have an identity or a purpose at the onset, and that might be true for a lot of these websites. The way that the site is evolving, with sponsors and other signs of mainstream integration, is very intriguing. Will that change the way that the site operates and affect the participatory nature of the community? Will they be able to sustain such a large audience? That remains to be seen. These are all questions that a lot of people are interested in, but not me.

I don't know if this is a book that I would have read outside of class. The dichotomy of YouTube isn't necessarily thrilling to me. Sure it has become a part of mainstream society and the media, but knowing its roots and criticisms and such isn't going to change the way that I use YouTube: watch funny videos, find music videos, and watch sports videos. That is all I really use it for, and the things in this book really didn't change any of that. It is a good read for someone who is very interested in the web, and it's still a good read if you're not. It is just a little boring.

YouTube Video: Posted

This is the video I ended up posting on YouTube: Me Singing Elton John. It's not much, but I will explain later the difficulties I had coming up with something even this simple.

There are so many to choose from...

I really don't have a favorite YouTube video. I have seen so many over the course of the last few years that none really stands out as a clear favorite.

That being said, some of the videos that I enjoy a lot are the "Batting Stance Guy" videos, particularly the one in which he impersonates players from the Red Sox. I am a Yankee fan, but I find this video much more entertaining because: 1) There aren't many distinctive batting stances in Yankee history, 2) It is fun to make fun of the batting stances of the Red Sox, 3) I don't enjoy watching Yankees get made fun of.

I first saw this video on Sports Illustrated's website. They have a section on their website totally concentrated on interesting links and videos that is updated daily. This video was put up one day a couple years ago, and it was one of those videos that I had to show all of my friends, since they are Red Sox fans. What I like so much about it is its simplicity. It is short, sweet, and very humorous. Well, maybe if you know baseball. Otherwise it might just be boring.

NOTE: So after watching other videos by this guy, I found one he did of the 2009 Yankees. I have to admit, I enjoyed it thoroughly.