Are You Going to Become a YouTube Star?

Short answer: No way. Long answer: The chances of a video getting more than a 1,000 views is less than 3 percent, according to a study done by Chris Wilson at Slate. He took 10,000 videos posted about a month ago, and tracked their views. The vast majority just languished in the sub 1,000-view realm (and about 6,500 couldn’t break 50 views), viewed by a few friends or random web-crawlers, never to be seen again. About the same number either broke the four-figure mark or have no views at all (2.8 percent). The only video to get over 100,000 views was the German house music video embedded below.

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This tracks well with the fact that of the 23 most watched videos of all time, 15 are music videos, and three others are pieces of professional produced content (the perennial views leader Evolution of Dance, two baby videos, a Harry Potter puppet show, something quite long in Spanish, and a guy playing guitar round out the top list). So, while we all the love the premise of videos “going viral” and making stars out of baby Charlie, it’s nearly statistically impossible. That might be why YouTube is having a hard time selling ads on a site made up mostly of pages that only 50 people are going to view.

This seems like a good time to note that GOOD office favorite, Avril Lavgine’s “Girlfriend,” has once again fallen behind the evil behemoth that is Evolution of Dance as the number one video of all time. Please help with your clicks.