We recently wondered if the "Hallelujah" video that was shot in a Macy's department store and performed by the Opera Company of Philadelphia would be the first viral hit of the holidays. What we could never have known was that it was just the start. In the week's following, another flash-mob-style performance hit YouTube, but this time from Canada.
The video, which was shot November 13th and uploaded just under a week later, has continued to grow in popularity with nearly every passing day. Of videos uploaded in the last month, it's #4 in most views -- #1 in Canada. Yesterday, it was near the top of both our Trending and Most Shared video lists, and today, it was the morning's most popular spiking search. Here's a chart of the video's daily views:
As the holiday season gets closer to full swing, we'll be closely monitoring this and other big holiday-related videos.
So we've already seen how one flash-mob version of Hallelujah went viral -- this one that was shot in a Philadelphia Macy's -- and in the past month, a second one (from Canada) has also managed to find its way around the web over the the Thanksgiving holiday.
The food court performance first gained traction with Canadian newspaper websites, but soon spread quickly as the video began making regular appearances in our Most Shared list. Right now, it's still one of the most shared videos of the past 24 hours and has drawn over 5 million views.
Over the previous week, there was an expected surge in Thanksgiving dinner related searches on YouTube.
The most common food search on YouTube was for "turkey," and the food search terms with the largest spike over the holidays were "carving a turkey" followed by "frying a turkey" ("stuffing" was #6). Overall, the search term with the biggest spike last week was "Black Friday."
Here's the unsurprising search curve for "turkey" from last week:
When we looked at two of the most popular cooking and carving videos, we found that the largest group of logged in users to view them were men from the 45-54 age range. Chef John's Foodwishes, one of the most popular cooking channels in YouTube, drew nearly a million views last week, with over half of them coming from men.
The states where "turkey" was the most popular? Arizona and Missouri.
The video of the Opera Company of Philadelphia performing in a Macy's first hit the web in early November, yet with Thanksgiving and the holiday season approaching, "philadelphia macys" is still among the top spiking search terms this morning.
So far, it's been viewed over 4.2 million times and has consistently appeared among our Most Shared videos. The performance of "Hallelujah" was created for the Knight Foundation's "Random Acts of Culture" and.
Here's how this video has grown in popularity this month:
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