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Who and where is watching now?

Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2025 10:35 am
by Bappy11
Monday evening, October 15. My wife receives an email from America from a friend: “I was watching funny videos of babies on YouTube, when I came across a video of Stijn and Merle! What a coincidence! They are such great talkers.” Is this a coincidence? Or did I send it myself, so it is only logical that this friend would come across the video of our twins Stijn and Merle?

How come your video suddenly goes viral?
Viral videos. Everyone is trying to get a grip on it. Also on Frankwatching several articles have been written about how to make a video go viral . With this article I also try to find an explanation why one of my videos has been viewed more than 1 million times.

Is there even an explanation for this? Or are there perhaps multiple causes? And who is watching the video now? Where and how do they do that? What actions do people take after watching the video? As input for this article I use the statistics up to and including Sunday 14 October. The video has a total number of views of 1,024,861 on Monday evening. Another 25,000 more.

What kind of video is this?
The video, posted on YouTube on May 15, 2011, lasts only 46 seconds. You see Stijn and Merle, my then almost four-month-old twins, communicating with each other.

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When I posted the video I didn't really think about the title of the video, let alone about its promotion. According to this article on Frankwatching I should have done that. I should have attached at least 12 labels to the video. I didn't do that either. My labels were, and still are, the following 'Twins' 'Talking' 'laughing' '”to each other”'. I didn't know.

Subscribers: higher in search results
In yet another article on Frankwatching there are also tips, but I have not used any of them. Not even the tip: "The more subscribers you have, the more 'weight' your videos get on YouTube and the greater the chance that they will appear in the search results. So make sure you have subscribers!" How many subscribers do you need for one million? In my case, 54 registered subscribers on my video channel.

Attractive title with good keywords
This article by Pelpina Trip may explain the success of the video. She indicates that people like to click on an attractive title with good keywords. Then mine “Twins Merle and Stijn talking to each other or: Stijn and Merle chatting away!” will be that. Right?

Finally, I read in yet another article that more interaction also results in more views on your YouTube video. The authors give four tips, which I have not done anything with to date. Despite all the tips in the articles on Frankwatching; still no explanation for the fact that this particular video has generated 1 million views.

What stands out among the viewers of the video is the percentage of women. More than two-thirds of the viewers are women, with the majority of the viewers in the age category 45-54 years.YouTube Video Statistics: Age and Gender

The majority of viewers come from the United States, followed at some distance by Saudi Arabia uae telegram data After which Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom complete the top five. Although the differences in viewers per age category are interesting, I will leave that for what it is for now.

YouTube Video Statistics: Countries

An explanation for the high number of views is simply the fact: the video is watched all over the world. It is logical that mainly women watch, laughing babies will mainly appeal to (expectant) mothers and (expectant) grandmothers. What do you learn from this? Things that seem logical often are logical.

How do they look?
Interesting to see is that the video was played 307,554 times on a mobile device. In short: 30% of the total number of views. This may say something about the development of mobile internet use, but is this also an explanation for the high number of views? I don't think so. Furthermore, the video was viewed more than 15,000 times on Facebook, because one or more people 'embedded' it there. Facebook clearly contributes to the virality of videos.

Captivating until the end
Another nice detail is that YouTube indicates what the viewer retention is. Two thirds of the viewers watch the video almost completely, up to 44 seconds. The line of viewer retention is a straight line. The average viewing time is 31 seconds. What does that tell me? The video is captivating until the end. I can't make it any simpler.

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