Open AccessViral video: Describing online multimedia information flows
Author(s) -
Goodrum Abby,
Devereaux Zachary,
Smith Andrew
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.2009.145046036
Subject(s) - metadata , popularity , computer science , world wide web , online video , multimedia , information retrieval , psychology , social psychology
Abstract This paper examines why certain videos go viral while other languish and die. To answer this question metadata associated with YouTube videos was collected (over the course of three separate weeks in 2009) and analyzed. The results show that virality is intimately connected to how one defines popularity, as different components of the metadata highlight the importance of different sets of videos over time. For this reason different elements of the metadata are explored and examples are given from the dataset that indicate popularity.