

The Rise of "Gangnam Style" - Embedly Stats - screeley
http://blog.embed.ly/embedly-stats-gangnam-style

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lazerwalker
The main stats they're reporting on are how many times the link was shared via
embed.ly, and how many times it was viewed within the context of an Embedly-
embedded video player (i.e. not directly viewed on YouTube).

It wouldn't surprise me if that selection bias is skewing the results when it
comes to the lack of a boost from Ellen / SNL / The Today Show. Those
appearances came late in the trend of the meme, and so it's logical to assume
that anybody who learned about Gangnam Style from TV appearances isn't
particularly meme- or net-savvy. Those aren't the sort of people who are
likely to share the link to the Youtube video using embed.ly. They'll either
tell their friends in person, or perhaps send them a direct YouTube link.

Also, since they're learning about the video from TV instead of from, say, an
Embedly-powered blog post about it, I'd also assume they're more likely to
view the video directly on YouTube rather than someone's posted Embedly copy.
If you search on Google for 'Gangnam Style', the official YouTube link is the
first result. If you check Google Trends
([http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=gangnam%20style&d...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=gangnam%20style&date=7%2F2012%204m&cmpt=q)),
you'll notice an uptick in search traffic in the middle of September, a
timeframe which includes all three of those TV appearances (the 10th, 14th,
and 15th) but isn't represented in Embedly's stats.

This is admittedly all hearsay, but it wouldn't surprise me if Psy's TV
appearances did actually result in a tangible bump in popularity.

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Lagged2Death
I think it's interesting that although we imagine we're part of a free culture
and a free market, a cultural artifact that succeeds and becomes popular on
its own merits is a rare thing with a special designation ("viral"). No
special designation is needed for cultural artifacts that only become popular
with the assistance of the professional hype classes, because that's
considered the default condition for popular things.

~~~
narrator
That's why I usually don't invest in stocks that have too many "news" articles
hyping them up as the next great buy.

~~~
SiVal
Yeah, that's why I didn't invest in Apple when my wife said we should. Now
I'll never hear the end of it....

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Dirlewanger
"PSY's appearance on Ellen, SNL and The Today Show cause zero noticeable
spikes"

Shouldn't be surprising in the least. The big network's dinosaur daytime show
producers still treat the Internet and its culture as some "silly little
thing" and only bother with it when something massive comes out of it...and by
then they're the last to report on it.

~~~
colmvp
His SNL appearance was pretty stupid. They basically used actors to replicate
his video in a store and only in the last moment brought him out.

~~~
joshtynjala
This has been the basic formula for cameo appearances on SNL for many, many
years. It was a little more simplified this time around, though. Typically, a
cameo like that happens after an SNL cast member has made their impersonation
a recurring bit from week to week. On the cameo night, the cast member will
make an especially big ass of themselves in character, and then the real
person will come out with a serious look on their face. The cast member will
act like they're in big trouble, and it always gets cheap laughs. It's usually
very short, like PSY's appearance, and the person doing the cameo typically
has one or two lines at most. I've seen some comedians or the musical guest do
a full sketch cameo, but that's pretty rare. I agree that it could have been
more entertaining. There wasn't much to work from with their usual formula,
and they basically went with the "hey kids, see how cool we are?" angle
instead of trying to write something with more comedic substance.

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thaumaturgy
Hey, does anybody remember that thing that was wildly popular last year? I was
going to mention it, but I can't remember what it was.

~~~
michaelochurch
Friday. And I just lost the game.

~~~
ralfd
Also planking, Nope! Chuck Testa and the Nyan Cat.

~~~
indiecore
Was Chuck Testa and Nyan Cat really last year? Jeez.

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alainbryden
The apparent cubic spline used to join data points on <http://embed.ly/stats>
looks a little ridiculous, especially when the popularity of something takes
off from 0 and your spline shows it first dipping to some negative number.

Maybe if you try using a quadratic spline? Mathematically it is almost just as
trivial, so your performance should be unaffected, and in my experience it
gets rid those embarrassing artifacts left by using cubic splines to join
points representing exponential data.

~~~
jemhoff
Whoops, you're right! I don't think I've ever noticed that before -- just
changed it to a monotone cubic and it looks much better. Thanks!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotone_cubic_interpolation>

~~~
alainbryden
Yeah that looks great.

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zorlem
Sigh, embed.ly's blog can't handle the incoming traffic. Google has the cache
if you want to look at the article - [1].

[1]:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cac...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ablog.embed.ly%2Fembedly-
stats-gangnam-style&oq=cache%3Ablog.embed.ly%2Fembedly-stats-gangnam-style)

 _edit: clarification: it's their blog that can't handle the traffic._

 _edit2: it's embed.ly, not refer.ly, sorry about that._

~~~
screeley
Truth. It's a Posterous blog, so I guess we are a little late it switching off
them. Here's another cached version that's a little easier to read:

[http://embed.ly/docs/explore/article?url=blog.embed.ly/embed...](http://embed.ly/docs/explore/article?url=blog.embed.ly/embedly-
stats-gangnam-style)

