

Ashton Kutcher made my day. Thanks Internet - grumo
http://grumomedia.com/ashton-kutcher-made-my-day-thanks-internet/

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daleharvey
I have always been surprised by the relatively low rate of twitter referrers,
13k out of 6 million is like 0.2%, which a similar number to what I have
observed, to get noticeable traffic you really need a few big twitter users to
mention it and a constant stream of follow on / retweets.

its surprising since I follow a relatively small amount of people and check
out most of what they recommend, I guess I am not indicative of the average
twitter user

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hebejebelus
Something else to note, though, is that a large number of twitter users use
twitter clients. This means that the traffic looks direct when it is, in fact,
from twitter.

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daleharvey
Good point, but I was measuring through bit.ly links, so lost referrals isnt
as much of an issue

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po
_the mob follow the whims of the star, like kitties following a laser pointer_

…except if the laser pointer keeps pointing at things the kitties don't like,
they slowly stop following it which makes the pointer sad. So in that way, the
pointer is being led around by the kitties in a feedback loop.

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grumo
I removed this line from the post as I don't want to offend Ashton Kutcher's
fans. They are the ones giving my video juice after all!

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acangiano
This confirms my experience as well. Twitter brings very little traffic, even
when you get retweeted plenty of times. At most, I saw 2,000 people come over
from Twitter. Conversely, I have had 30K+ people come to my blog from a single
mention on Reddit.

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alex_c
I think it's interesting that for cases like this, YouTube's analytics are
completely useless:

<http://i.imgur.com/2COBs.png>

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grumo
I noticed YouTube updates the view account and analytics in intervals of about
an hour. The current stats show Twitter traffic but they are still not even
close to be as useful as the one provided by Google Analytics. Which is funny
because Google owns YouTube.

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brc
I'd just like to make a counter point - while it is more trackable and instant
these days, celebrity endorsement/trend setting is nothing new.

Celebrities have launched hairstyles, clothing styles, holiday destinations,
social trends and sports.

Swimming at the beach wasn't at all common until King George started doing it.
The dress Kate Middleton wore for her engagement announcement with Prince
William sold out within two days.

What is new is the instant change a celebrity can make, but this unfortunately
means the trends tend to last a microscopically short time. 250 years after
King George went for a dip at Weymouth, we're still all going to the beach.

[note: humor intended here, not really making a comparison between beach
visits and blog visits]

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apinstein
And you just made my day!

That is one incredible product video.

We've been looking to do these for our products but couldn't find anyone to do
it. That problem is now solved.

~~~
sean_lynch
Agreed and bonus points for using a map of Vancouver :)

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grumo
They say Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.. even
from the sky, and even in cartoon format. hehe.

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kenjackson
If I was in the market I'd definitely use it.

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quellhorst
"... that effortless act sent 13,000 people to go watch a 1:41min video. This
means that my video was watched for a total of 365 hours. In other words, with
5 seconds of effort Ashton was able to consume 365 hours of his followers
time."

Views != Watching your entire video. Many probably bounced after a few
seconds.

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shykes
I'm willing to bet that using the word "instructional" was detrimental to the
tweet's click-through rate.

~~~
nitrogen
It looks like I may have unintentionally downvoted this post on my phone --
one of the major downsides of using the same interaction (touch) for clicking
and scrolling. I wonder if this explains some of the apparently-unmotivated
downvoting seen on HN.

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ericd
Great writeup, Miguel. Ashton Kutcher Twitter Seconds is a great metric :-)

I should probably write up a blog post about this, but if anyone thinks their
website could use an informational video, I'd definitely choose Grumo again,
personally.

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matdwyer
I actually clicked & watched this and assumed that it was a paid tweet (i.e.
you paid him to post it)

Very neat that he just randomly posted that.

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barapa
PadMapper site is down...a real shame to miss this opportunity.

~~~
ericd
Fortunately it didn't miss the brunt of it, but yeah it is a shame that it
would be down, ever. There are some issues I need to fix with the server to
deal with its growth.

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snissn
you should add those spammy overlay button links to your website on top of the
youtube video. seriously, there's no clickable way to get to your site from
the video

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geovedi
congrats, but now the padmapper site is unaccessible. ;-)

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grumo
<http://padmapper.com> was entirely built by one man, Eric DeMenthon. He must
be dealing with the new wave of traffic after Ashton Kutcher posted the link
to my video. Wish him luck, he has done a hell of a hacking job to put that
site together.

