Taking the shine off Viral

There was an interesting post earlier this week on Tech Crunch concerning The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos - as defined by a real expert in the industry.

I have to say I am a tad disappointed with the approach that the author outlines in relation to getting onto the “Most Viewed” page.

Here is an excerpt of his comments:

• Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.
• Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.
• MySpace: Plenty of users allow you to embed YouTube videos right in the comments section of their MySpace pages. We take advantage of this.
• Facebook: Share, share, share. We’ve taken Dave McClure’s advice and built a sizeable presence on Facebook, so sharing a video with our entire friends list can have a real impact. Other ideas include creating an event that announces the video launch and inviting friends, writing a note and tagging friends, or posting the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.
• Email lists: Send the video to an email list. Depending on the size of the list (and the recipients’ willingness to receive links to YouTube videos), this can be a very effective strategy.
• Friends: Make sure everyone we know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

I am not keen on this approach at all.

Starting new threads and embedding videos, only to kickstart a ‘conversation’ by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users is underhand, unauthentic, and feels like cheating to me.

That coupled with the stance of embedding YouTube videos right in the comments section of MySpace pages, ‘just because you can’ is an odd approach.

And finally growing a Facebook presence and ’sharing’ a video with your entire friends might have a ‘real impact’ but it sounds a whole lot like spamming to me.

I wouldn’t pretend to be a viral expert, in any way shape or form. But I can’t help but feel really dissapointed. Whilst I can hear the TV advertising industry collapsing all around me - I always felt that Viral was one of a number of upstart replacements with a good honest vibe.

How naive of me.