Why Videos Go Viral

Thesis: Reasons why videos go viral

Purpose: To entertain the audience with a presentation on why videos go viral

Introduction

As a specialist in public relations, I feel best suited to deliver this speech on the

reasons why videos go viral. Most people in the world want to be famous. That is a

basic fact that cannot be argued with. This is something that seemed hard to achieve

some time ago. However, this is a trend that has changed, over the years, due to

web video. People can now become famous within a span of one week. This brings

us to the major question in this speech; why do internet videos go viral? YouTube

can be used as an illustration. Every minute, about 48 hours are uploaded in

YouTube. However, only a tiny percentage of this goes viral. Therefore, it is

important to discuss why these videos go viral.

Unexpectedness

Just the other day, a four minute video of a guy laughing, while viewing the rainbow,

had 5,000,000 views on YouTube. At the same time, there are other videos that may

seem to be worthy of such views, yet they do not achieve this. This shows that there

is great value in unexpectedness. People on the internet want to see things that they

do not expect there. They prefer to view videos that cannot be predicted. That is how

such funny and short videos go viral. It is a technique that has been repeatedly used

by celebrities. It shows creativity, as well as captures the attention of people on the

internet, at a glance.

Tastemakers

There are people in the society that act as tastemakers. This means that they have

the ability to engage in activities that command a lot of support and following, from

people all over the world. These are people that can make everyone want to be

associated with something. A recent example is that of Rebecca Black with her song,

‘Friday’. This video did not have views at first. Later, its views shot up and it became

one of the most watched videos on YouTube. However, there is one interesting

aspect to these findings. The days when the views were highest were always

Fridays. This shows that the song raised awareness of the importance and

Entertainment speech its all about speech

Hospitality and Tourism Marketing (HTMC106)