'Cone-ing' or: How to Will a Trend into Popularity

June 20, 2011

Is it possible to make something a trend just by calling it a trend?

Australian jokester Alki Stevens might have figured it out. On June 5, he posted a video titled "CONE-ING IS THE NEW PLANKING!!!!!" a reference to the actual Australian fad of "planking." The prank reel has since been viewed over 2 million times.

Up until June 2011, there were only a handful of videos tagged "coneing" or "cone-ing" on YouTube. For the most part they were videos like THIS, unrelated clips, or uploads from Stevens himself, who posted his first attempt at "cone-ing" in May of 2009 and his first compilation a year later.

Since Steven's video first began gaining popularity, we've now seen over 200 "cone-ing" videos in just the past two weeks. Some, like this very funny reaction video, have over 100,000 views. Many new cone-ers are submitting videos to Stevens, the trend initiator himself, who uses them for fan montages, while others are uploading attempts to their own channels. Check out a few funny example below:

(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)

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Finger-Tutting Is Back

June 15, 2011

One of the Most Shared trending videos on YouTube and one of the most popular videos in France is this spot from Samsung Mobile, featuring YouTube performer JayFunk:

The clip was produced for the launch of the Galaxy SII in France and is quickly drawing an audience.

"Tutting" is a style of dance that first became popular on YouTube in 2009. (You can see one of dancer Mike Song's most-viewed routines in the style here.) In particular, the "finger tutting" variety began picking up fans and spawned a few viral clips.

There are numerous "finger tutting tutorials" posted, but in the playlist below we've collected some of the most popular videos from performers of the unique style -- mostly from 2009 -- starting with the video that JayFunk first became known for:

(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)

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Musical McDonald's Ordering

June 01, 2011

The Most Viewed and Most Shared video today in Spain is this clip of an amusing fast-food order from Spanish singer/cover artist Xuso Jones. Jones has posted a number of covers on his channel, many of which have found a mid-level audience -- his Jay Sean cover has been seen over 100,000 times. But this latest performance/practical joke has been viewed over half of a million times since Monday and has been particularly popular on Facebook:

Jones isn't the first singer to creatively place a McDonald's order. This clip (in English) from young singer Todrick Hall was posted almost exactly a year ago and has since drawn 1.6 million views.

Even pre-dating Hall -- though his might be one of the most popular and best executed -- there are a great many of these McDonald's musical ordering videos posted on YouTube. (And that's not even including all the rap orders.) Some examples below:

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What They're Watching: Nyan Cat

May 31, 2011

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 aren't one of the 12,426,134 people who discovered the memorizing qualitiesof Nyan cat, then you certainly don't want to look now. Or, maybe you do.

Yeah, I don't get it either, but I have to admit it's strangely addicting and pierces my eardrums at the same time. Curious to see how the Nyan Cat has inspired other YouTubers? Check out the best Nyan Cat related videos below.

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'People of Walmart' Sees Sudden Rise

May 27, 2011

You might have seen this clip floating around this week: a "People of Walmart" music video based on the same named website. The song was created by singer-songwriter Jessica Frech and appears to have broad appeal, drawing views from cities across the United States.

Interestingly, the video was heavily shared two weekends ago -- and was subsequently featured on Trends -- but as you can see from the chart below, it's biggest spike in popularity didn't happen until mid-this-week when it got some additional press pick-up:

(May take a moment to load in full.)

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Time-Lapses and the 10 Most-Viewed Commencement Addresses

May 23, 2011

It's the graduation time of year for many college and graduate school students. And, naturally, we've started to see lots of commencement-related videos popping up on the site. Last week, a video of Austin Whitney, a paralyzed UC Berkeley senior who was able to walk across the stage with the aid of an "exoskeleton," went viral, became one of the week's top trending clips, and drew over 300,000 views from around the world:

Graduation ceremonies can be long, but one of the big graduation day trends so far this year have been "commencement 2011 time-lapses" of which there are numerous iterations posted from Universities around the country. Here are 10:

(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)

Today, the YouTube blog has more on the famous (and less famous) commencement speeches available for viewing on YouTube, but we wanted to see which ones had racked up the most views, and the list below, which features a number of big-name celebrities, is what we came up with:

(*Combined views. May take a moment to load in full.)

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Australia's 'Planking' Craze Spreads

May 17, 2011

"Planking," the game of laying still, facedown on the ground in unusual places, has existed for a number of years, but it's recently become a phenomenon in Australia and is now drawing lots of attention here in the United States. Over the weekend, this news report from an Australian network became popular here when it was picked up by American web culture blogs:

The report is one of the the most-viewed video in Australia today, but has also been one of the top Trending Videos globally. This week reports of a man who died performing a stunt on an apartment balcony served to fuel interest internationally.

As the fad has grown, more and more compilations and video clips of these pranksters have been appearing on the site. Roughly 600 "planking"-related videos have been uploaded in the past week. The playlist below contains a few examples:

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Finals Week Means It's Time for a Flash Mob

May 06, 2011

We've spent lots of time on flash mobs recently since they seem to be the trend that goes on and on. As we noted, previously, "flash mob" performance videos started years ago (see: The 10 Most Viewed Flash Mobs of All Time ), but truly got a shot in the arm over Christmas when hallelujah flash mobs were surprising mall shoppers around the country and became the biggest trend of the holidays.

Nearly 2,000 "flash mob"-related videos have been uploaded in the past seven days, though it should be noted that many people perhaps incorrectly described the gatherings/celebrations this week following the news of Osama bin Laden's death as "flash mobs."

Now, as college students are taking their final exams, we're seeing a whole new crop of college/university flash mob videos popping up this week. In the past few days, some have been appearing on Most Shared lists across the country, like this one from Loyola in Chicago, which was trending in that city:

But speaking of debatable flash mobs, we're also seeing many that are more just choreographed public performances than the traditional flash mobs, where the audience of strangers is completely taken off-guard by the performers. Take this one for example, which has been popular across North and South Carolina:

It was almost exactly a year ago that the Ohio State's Union flash mob first took off, drawing over two million views and becoming the most well-known of the college dance flash mobs. (Cornell had one of the early famous general ones, with their Pirate flash mob.)

Below is a playlist collegiate flash mob videos from all over the United States, just from the past few weeks. It's worth noting that nearly all of them were uploaded by the Universities themselves:

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10 Ways to Ask A Date to Prom

May 04, 2011

On Friday, we looked at 10 trending wedding and "romance" videos from the month of April, and among that selection of casanova clips was footage of some very popular videos of students asking out their prom dates. As it turns out, we are seeing tons of prom-ask or "prom-posal" videos popping up on YouTube, which catalogue the creative lengths some high schoolers have gone to in order to secure that all-important date to the big dance.

Some YouTube users are actually using YouTube videos to do the asking (see here and here), while others are opting for public embarrassment (see a number of examples below).

Below you will find 10 popular and semi-popular videos from around the country. Some are cute, some are funny, and all are from this 2011 school year.

(May take a moment to load. Watch the full playlist here.)

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10 Romance and Wedding Videos from This Month

April 29, 2011

April has been a month filled with wedding, proposal, and prom trending videos, so in light of this morning's ceremony and festivities, we decided to pull together a list of 10 of the most popular clips from the past month that fall into this category.

From anniversaries to viral spoofs to embarrassing best man toasts, April really brought us a lot of amusing and surprising variety of videos that sometimes stretch our traditional notions of romance...

(May take a moment to load.)

And though it may not be from this month, we've spent a lot of time discussing flash mobs lately, so here's December's flash mob wedding for your enjoyment.

P.S. If you want to see how number 7 turned out, you can watch that here.

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Three Little Girls You Wouldn't Want to Mess With

April 26, 2011

Lately, we've seen an interesting "trend" develop with three separate videos drawing blogger attention in the past few weeks that each feature tough young ladies performing some cool -- and very unusual -- physical feats.

There's no true link between the videos themselves, the sole connection -- aside from the obvious one -- seemings to be our own fascination with their unusual, gender-stereotype-defying interests and abilities. Take a look:

Monique Sciberras is a 10-year-old Muay Thai kickboxer from Australia whose parents introduced her to the sport to help overcome her autism. Various versions of this training session video were picked up across the web in the past week.
9-year-old Naomi Kutin from New Jersey weighs only 88 lbs, but can squat 187 as demonstrated by this video, which has been viewed over 200,000 times this month.
There's less information about this clip other than that the young sword wielder was filmed at a Japanese workshop last May. It's one of two Japanese videos featuring female sword experts trending this week.

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For Passover: Jewish Holiday A Cappella

April 18, 2011

Passover begins tonight, and, like most holidays, we're seeing a number of trending videos commemorating it.

In December, Yeshiva University's Maccabeats created one of the most popular holiday videos of the year with their version of "Dynamite" for Chanukah. They also incidentally kicked off a new holiday trend: Jewish holiday parody songs.

Here are five of the most popular (mostly a cappella) examples:

(May take a moment to load. Watch the full playlist here.)

Want more Passover YouTube Trends?

Over the Christmas season, the "Digital Story of the Nativity" and "A Social Network Christmas" find big success and drew millions of views, becoming two of the most popular holiday videos of the year. Now, "Google Exodus" has drawn over 1.5 million views so far this month:

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Boom Boom Boom: 'Weehoo' Videos

March 30, 2011

Over the past week or two, you might have seen a version of this video floating around from Norwegian user CathyMay15:

Catherine's Outhere Boys cover quickly spread across pop culture blogs and social media in March becoming a hit in places nearby and far away from Trondheim, Norway. Today, three of her videos are among the Most Shared in Sweden.

Meanwhile, a trend of parodies appeared on YouTube of other users doing their best Catherine impression -- some are more disturbingly convincing than others -- but perhaps the best reactions are from CathyMay15 fans that are just following instructions. Here are seven different examples:

(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)

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"Words Do Hurt"

March 29, 2011

Anti-bullying campaigns pushed off in full force last fall with the It Gets Better project created by Dan Savage. That campaign, which began modestly, resulted in hundreds of encouragement videos from celebrities, politicians, and everyday people (including googlers) who wanted to share stories and words of encouragement. Eventually the President of the United States even contributed one.

(View our "It Gets Better" timeline here.)

We've continued to see anti-bullying videos appear on YouTube since -- there are still hundreds of "bullying" vlogs and "It Gets Better" videos posted each week -- and in the last month, the conversation around teen bullying has once again spiked. Sometimes the most powerful responses are the ones put up by those who are subjected to that sort of treatment. This one has just drawn national media attention:

Alye's simple message -- "Words are powerful" --- has generated video responses and hundreds of comments.

We took those comments and created a graphic to get a general idea of what "words" had been used by those responding to her video:

Click to enlarge. Image created at Wordle.net

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Cartoons from the Middle East

March 23, 2011

YouTube Trends recently added seven countries from the Middle East and Northern Africa to our Trends Dashboard, so you can now view the Most Shared and Most Viewed videos in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.

In Jordan, some of the most popular videos this week come from Kharabeesh Cartoons, a company based in Jordan where it is the second most-subscribed YouTube partner. Kharabeesh produces slick cut-out-style political cartoons, including this one featuring Hosni Mubarak.

As you can see in the chart above, Kharabeesh's rise in popularity has really taken place in the last few months. They're most viewed video is a spoof-speech by Muammar Gaddafi, which was posted February 23rd and has picked up over 800,000 views. Other popular clips include "Mubarak is High" and "Gaddafi in Arabs' Got Talent." To date, the animation firm's videos have been viewed nearly 5 million times.

The videos, all of which are subtitled in English, provide an interesting glimpse into how comedians and animators are reacting to the incredible events in the region over the past few months.

See more of what's popular around the world and, now, across the Middle East with our Trends Dashboard.

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Reading Dr. Seuss to Celebrate His Birthday

March 02, 2011

Today is commemoration of what would have been Theodor Seuss Geisel 107th birthday. They may not get a lot of views, but users of all ages -- tall and small -- have recorded their own readings of some of Mr. Geisel's classic works. While there's been an uptick in the last few days in these type of videos, there are scores of them that exist in YouTube that span age and human experience.

The playlist below contains 10 examples of Dr. Seuss readings that have been posted in the past month, beginning with a father reading "Green Eggs and Ham" with his little girl and concluding with a young woman reading "Oh The Places You'll Go" to her hospitalized father. You'll also find football players reading to school kids, a student reading to his class, and an autistic child reading Dr. Seuss' work on an iPad.

(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)

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What Is This 'Apaci Dansi' Video?

March 01, 2011

If you've been tracking our Most Shared feed over the last two days, then you may have come across this gem, which was posted by a user in Germany:

The video was posted on the 20th, but only had a few thousand views through the 25th, mostly coming from Germany and Turkey, the two countries where it's been the most regionally popular. But in the past three days it's picked up over a million views from across Europe, Argentina, and the United States and it's still among our Most Shared videos.

So what is it exactly?

"Apaci" style, according to one explanation, is a Turkish subculture "which takes its name from the American Indian people: Apaches." Though at least one YouTube user says it doesn't have much to do with Native American, but is just a fun dance from Turkey.

There are many examples of the "Apaci Dansi" posted on YouTube, with the most popular bunch posted last spring. Below you'll find a playlist of examples all uploaded by users with channels from Turkey:

So, while to some it just looks like a dad doing a silly dance, to some users the "Hasan Baba" Apache dance has actually got the added funny layer of being sort of like a Turkish version of watching your dad do, say, "the dougie."

Of course, here in the United States, we also have a different concept of what the "Apache dance" exactly means.

(Know more about this trend? Share it in the comments!)

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Keywords of a 'Revolution'

February 16, 2011

In attempt to get a wider snapshot of the events in the Middle East over the past two weeks, we've pulled together some YouTube keyword data to examine which words were tied closest to the dramatic footage coming out of the region.

We took 2,000 videos uploaded to YouTube since January 25th that included the Arabic word for "revolution" in the title. We then isolated the keywords tagged to those videos and translated them all to English using Google Translate. What you see below is a visualization of those keywords using the online tool Wordle.

(Click to enlarge)

• Like words? See which words were the most popular among your questions to President Obama.

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Young & Old Viewer Case Study: What's Predictable and What's Not

February 11, 2011

YouTube Trends ran an informal case study today to see how much the 10 Most Viewed videos varied between teenagers (13-17 year olds) and the 55-64 crowd* using our Trends Dashboard. Here's what we found:

The trailer/music video for Justin Bieber's new movie (below) and Your Favorite Martian's "Zombie Love Son" video were in the top ten for young viewers in the United States, while This footage of drivers struggling with snow on an Arkansas road and some ...golf tips... were in the top ten for the older viewers.

One video that was near the top for both: the trailer for Just Go With It, which, despite prominently featuring Brooklyn Decker in a bikini, is popular with both genders.

*Demographic data based on logged-in, self-reported info

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Do You Have a New Zodiac Sign?

January 14, 2011

So apparently there's a new star sign in town, and the astrological changes seem to have gotten the YouTube community pretty worked up.

Over 500 videos (and counting) containing the keyword "ophiuchus" have been posted to the site today. As of writing, topics related to the new sign composed all top 5 topics on Google Trends and, this morning, "new zodiac sign" was among our spiking searches on YouTube.

Most of the users posting their reactions are not pleased. Here's a playlist:

(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here. We've also pulled out some below.)

The ghost of famous astronomer and author Carl Sagan has also weighed in on the issue:

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