Across the Country: What Final Four Fans are Watching

March 28, 2012

This weekend marks NCAA basketball's Final Four, the semifinal and final for men's college basketball in the United States. The NCAA tournament is a basketball lover's dream, and it continues to draw out enthusiasm and passion from college sports fans nationwide.

So its no surprise that some of the most-shared and -viewed videos in the hometowns of many Final Four teams are basketball related. We break down a handful below:

TOPEKA: Ultimate Kansas Fan	LOUISVILLE: That Cardinal doesn't like this UK fan's truck

LEXINGTON: Bluegrass in the Big Easy	COLUMBUS: Pre-Final Four press conference

Interestingly, the state of Ohio is enthralled this week not just with Ohio State videos. The most-shared clip in Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus is this letter to the Browns football team.

See more of what's popular in different locations nationally and around the world with our Trends Dashboard.

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Unlikely Musical Instruments: Floppy Disk Drives

March 21, 2012

Performances involving unusual musical instruments have been a longtime YouTube staple, but over the last several months, we've started to see more and more of a particularly strange "instrument" being used to create tunes: old floppy disk drives.

YouTube saw a big spike in searches for "floppy drive" starting this past October, when the Star Wars "Imperial March" below first went viral. It's now been seen over 4.3 million times. It was created by Polish science students at a university.

This week, you can witness how elaborate recycling floppy disk drives for this untended purpose can get. MrSolidSnake745 is an entire channel of retro-tech covers using the drives and his videos have been viewed over 2 million times and counting. Here's the clip that's currently trending...

And that's not even the only channel producing covers like these ongoingly:

While searches since October have been noticeably higher for "floppy drive" videos, the trend is not necessarily a new one and some popular floppy drive covers have been around for longer:

Check out the floppy disk topic page to discover more.

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'Pi Day': The Unlikely Web Video Holiday

March 15, 2012

Yesterday was "Pi Day." You know, March 14. 3.14?

It's a day some people may remember from geometry class, but its now found a new following on the web, where fans of math and science routinely produce all sorts of "Pi"-related content on this obscure holiday.

In fact, over 1,000 videos tagged "Pi Day" were uploaded this week. Some took a straightforward approach, like this explainer from Numberphile:

While some people were a big more unconventional. The BYU Mathletes, seen here, used the opportunity to do something unique:

But not everybody is a fan. YouTube scribbler and self-described "mathemusician" Vi Hart produced this clip last year, that remains one of the most viewed Pi Day videos.

If you're interested, you can see Hart's 2012 video here.

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Tracking the Popularity of 'KONY 2012'

March 13, 2012

Last week, the 30 minute "KONY 2012" documentary, produced by Invisible Children, dominated social media feeds and was, by far, the most-viewed video on YouTube. The clip, which has been seen over 75 million times already, has seen unprecedented popularity for a non-profit video.

A look at viewing over time shows that viewing peaked last Wednesday with 31 million views in a single day, coinciding with what seemed to be the period of highest social activity around the clip.

The top rising searches, globally, on YouTube in the past 30 days relate to this subject and over 7 million views were from searches. Over 20,000 "Kony"-related videos have been uploaded in the past week.

Over 20 million views were from social media platforms. Some of entertainment's biggest stars, including Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Diddy, and Oprah, shared the video on their social media accounts, and the video quickly became the most-shared clip around the world. The video continues to spread and the numbers continue to climb, with the video still averaging millions of views per day.

The video has been increasingly popular and it's single day spike in viewing nearly tripled the most-recent video to see this kind of speedy spread.

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