Saturday, September 7, 2013

My Experience Going Viral

Sounds like some sort of plague that I contracted... but don't worry, I'm fine. Many of you have probably seen "Why Men and Women Can't be Friends."
I made that. It has 8.5 million views. Aren't I cool?

My friend Pat approached me one day and asked if I would help him shoot something for his english project.  The project was to make a video based off their persuasive paper.  His paper was called, "why men and women can't be friends."  He was writing on the topic because it was bothering him that his girlfriend was hanging out with these dudes, claiming that they're just her friends.  He argued that the only reason they're hanging around her is because they like her.  Ironically enough, I think she ended up marrying one of those, "Friends"  (don't quote me on that.)

Another fun fact, the girl who said she was just friends with "Taylor Mulford" ended up marrying him as well, just to further prove the case.

Well, we filmed it, and it went viral and it was crazy watching the numbers rise so fast.  We got interviewed by a bunch of people, including fox 13 which we gave the stipulation that we'd do it only if they said we were single.  So after they showed the interview, it cut back to the lead anchor, and he said, "by the way girls, they are both single..."  hilarious.

Ryan Seacrest and Ellen apparently even debated it on his show.  It had become a national and even somewhat of a global conversation, even spawning some real researchers to do thesis studies on the argument.

It was a pretty fun time for sure.  Interestingly enough, neither me or pat ever posted it on our facebook walls or promoted it one bit.  He just showed it to his english class, and they found it on youtube and started passing it around.

Just goes to show that it's all about creating great content.

Something I do regret from the experience is we didn't react quick enough.  We could have turned Pat into a youtube personality and made some good money, but we hesitated.  It took us a month before we released the second one, and by that point the buzz had died down.

A company gave us a free trip to Cabo under the stipulation that we made 4 videos for them.  We never really passed the videos around or shared them with anyone, because there was nothing in it for us if they did get more attention.

Since the video's never got much attention, I'm going to post them here for your viewing enjoyment.  Take care.


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