AS THE year draws to a close, YouTube has released its lists of the top videos watched in South Africa in 2013.
RUN, BRYAN, RUN: Bryan Habana races a plane in one of South Africa's most popular YouTube videos in 2013. (Business Day)
The video sharing website said on Wednesday that 100 hours of video were uploaded onto the site every minute and more than 6-billion hours of video were watched each month — almost an hour for every person on Earth.
When it comes to what makes a video go “viral”, Google SA head of communication Julie Taylor says: “There’s no exact formula, but popular videos tend to have three key characteristics. They’re entertaining or informative in some way, they’re something that you want to share with other people, and they come from a channel with more videos like it.”
For South Africa, the video with the most views showed a truck accident in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal, that killed 22 people in September. A mounted camera on a company car filmed the footage, which shocked the country and attracted almost 1-million views.
The rest of the list was a mix of promotional videos (Bryan Habana racing a British Airways plane, Halls’ hip-hop-themed “Klein Kimmie” ad and Dove’s “Real Beauty” sketch), news reports (theWestgate Mall attack in Kenya, bike-riding for children), animal videos (National Geographic’s “Jaguar attacks crocodile”) and comedy (Ylvis’s novelty music single What Does the Fox Say?, “How animals eat their food” and “7-year-old steals iPhone”).
The top ads came from Volkswagen, WeChat with Lionel Messi, KFC, Beacon Allsorts and Dove (in first place).
Surprisingly, the top YouTube channel was run by Swedish gaming comic PewDiePie. American and Canadian channels rounded out the list, with The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The X-Factor, Jenna Marbles and Just for Laughs finishing the top five.
When it came to music videos, Miley Cyrus ruled, coming in first and second with her two hit songs Wrecking Ball and We Can’t Stop. Robin Thicke’s worldwide smash Blurred Lines came in fifth after Katy Perry and PSY.
YouTube determines the list and what is trending through an aggregate of views, shares, likes and comments.
“You don’t just watch videos — you share, like, make responses and more,” Ms Taylor said. “We looked at the many ways you interact with videos to identify the top trending videos that everybody was talking about in 2013.”
It is the fifth year that YouTube has compile these lists for countries all over the world. More than 80% of YouTube’s traffic come from outside the US at this point.
Mandela dominates online conversation
Former president Nelson Mandela. (SUNDAY TIMES)
In the same vein, online mentions of Nelson Mandela skyrocketed after his death in Johannesburg last Thursday, dominating online conversations in most countries with widespread internet access.
Reseach provider BrandsEye recorded almost 5-million mentions related to Mandela in the 24 hours after President Jacob Zuma announced his death. By December 6, that number had swelled to more than 11.5-million mentions, with people sharing condolences, remembrances, quotes and images of the former president.
The numbers kept up through the weekend, with more users commenting on the news coverage of his death as well as the funeral arrangements.
His official memorial service at the FNB Stadium on Tuesday bumped the number of mentions back up to their previously high levels. US President Barack Obama also saw a lion’s share of mentions, mostly concerning his speech, the now infamous “selfie” with the British and Danish prime ministers, and his handshake with Cuba’s Raul Castro.
In terms of location, South Africa led the online conversation when the news first hit. But over the next six days, the US took over with more than 12% of all internet mentions related to Mandela. South Africa still accounts for almost 7% of all mentions, and Nigeria came in as the country with the next biggest share.
The number is expected to continue steadily growing again as Mandela lies in state in Pretoria this week ahead of his burial in Qunu in the Eastern Cape on Sunday.