Potential viral video hits appear online every day. These hits-in-waiting vary in popularity, from Susan Boyle, to United Breaks Guitars, to Evian's Roller Babies, but at their core they all have that special something that attracts Internet video audiences by the millions. The latest hit features an unexpectedly entertaining take on the traditional wedding ceremony entrance.
JK Wedding Dance
After watching this unconventional – to say the least! – wedding entrance it should come as no surprise that it's wildly popular. It's generated more than 100 unique clips, 12+ million views (!!), and over 50,000 comments (!!) since July 19.
The clip has become so popular that not only were the newly weds interviewed on the Today Show, but the entire wedding party was asked to perform the dance live.
But, as with all the other viral hits out there, it begs the question: what makes a video go viral? While there is no magic formula for viral video success, our data continues to reinforce that many popular online videos share several important characteristics:
1. They're unexpected: The best viral videos catch us off guard. Even with all the word of mouth – "Check this video out. Unreal..." – titles and tags – "Wedding Dance" – and other indications pointing to what we're about to experience, we never quite know what's coming. This is because, to a certain extent, the videos that take off are, in the end, hard to explain. They show us that, despite being bombarded with untold amounts of images every day, we still haven't seen it all and can still be surprised. And we like it. Be honest, did you expect that performance when you pressed the play button?
2. They're fun: Popular clips tend not to take themselves too seriously. Whether they're funny, sweet, clever, goofy, or gross, they tend to make us smile. We can connect with them – they show us at our best, and at our worst; they show us ideas we wish we thought of, and others we can't believe exist; we see a bit of ourselves in them and want to show everyone else, too. If this video isn't fun, we're not sure what is.
3. They leave room for conversation: The most-watched clips almost always leave big parts of the story untold and audiences wondering what they just saw. Was the video staged, spontaneous, perhaps a combination of the two? How did they do it? Is it real? All of these questions bring audiences back again and again, and encourage them to share the clip to get everyone else's opinion. How many of you thought this clip was staged or professionally produced? Did you wonder if the dancers were hired for the stunt, rather than friends of the bride and groom?
What do you think makes a successful viral video? Will there ever be a magic formula? Leave your comments below and tell us what you think.
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The data used in this post was collected from the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing video repository of analytic data on 100+ million Internet videos from 150+ video-sharing destinations.