
Analysis of all YouTube trending videos in US for 2019 - ammar_x
https://ammar-alyousfi.com/2020/youtube-trending-videos-analysis-2019-us
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ve55
I find it kind of sad looking at what popular Youtube channels looked like
5-10+ years ago, and comparing it to their videos today.

As you scroll down the list of videos from oldest to newest, the lengths get
longer. No longer are there any petty three minutes or five minute videos, let
alone a one minute video. Now videos are all 10-25 minutes, the perfect length
for maximum ad revenue.

Similar things happen to the thumbnails, which start containing more and more
exaggerated, sometimes creepily-so, faces, reacting to absurd images that last
for a fraction of a second in the video. The titles change too, becoming more
and more outrageous, begging for you to click on them and spend hours watching
anticipatory and 'exciting' content.

A lot of things have gotten better too, of course, and the amount of content
that is available is amazing. But I do really miss when it felt like a place
where people went to share videos and socialize, rather than where all the
popular channels are ran like companies that follow the same clickbait format
news organizations now also follow.

~~~
graedus
> Similar things happen to the thumbnails, which start containing more and
> more exaggerated, sometimes creepily-so, faces, reacting to absurd images
> that last for a fraction of a second in the video.

There was a nice little examination of this phenomenon, dubbed YouTube Face, a
couple of years ago.

Article: [https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/04/your-pretty-face-is-
goi...](https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/04/your-pretty-face-is-going-to-
sell/)

HN thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16803937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16803937)

~~~
wirthjason
In Japan so much of mainstream prime time TV programming is reactions videos.
Often people reacting to food from another prefecture with a minimum of two
picture-in-picture heads reach the to the video.

My wife is addicted to YouTube videos / YouTubers and I think there’s a high
degree of similarity.

This content feels low quality and cheap to produce.

I think that article captures this phenomenon well.

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symplee
Another excellent analysis of what Trends on YouTube [0]

"Is the trending tab rigged against creators? Is late night dominating the
charts? Why does it feel your favorite controversial creator never trends. All
of that and more, in the first ever data-driven look at the trending tab."

What 40,000 Videos Tell Us About The Trending Tab:

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8)

~~~
ammar_x
I like that. Excellent storytelling, inspiring. Thank you for sharing.

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pvankessel
This is really great - and kudos for providing methodological details and
code! I love seeing this kind of large-scale descriptive research, it's a real
bummer that YouTube is starting to close up access to their API. We did a
similar kind of analysis looking at videos posted by popular channels last
year, including some analysis of keywords that boosted views - figure you
might find it interesting (and I'd love to see if our findings hold up with
your dataset!) [https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/07/25/a-week-in-
th...](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/07/25/a-week-in-the-life-of-
popular-youtube-channels/)

~~~
ammar_x
Thank you.. The analysis you've done seems really interesting and gave me some
more ideas to implement in future analyses.

For keywords that boost views, I'll run a similar analysis on my data and
report the results to you here in another comment. Probably this weekend.

And I just heard from you that YouTube is starting to close up access to their
API. I visit YT API website from time to time but haven't noticed such a
thing. It's really a bummer. They should be more open not the opposite. Do you
have some source if I want to know more about that?

~~~
pvankessel
Would love to see what you come up with, will stay tuned!

As for the API restrictions, they aren't advertising it but about a year ago
they started warning users about forthcoming extensive audits to maintain
access, and about six months ago they started reducing access for API keys if
you stopped maxing them out for a day or more. Our last API key got shut down
for good a couple of weeks ago. We're going to try to fill out the form and
get our access reinstated, but I'm not sure how willing they'll be to allow
access for research. The form seems intended for client-facing apps. But who
knows - Facebook/CrowdTangle/Twitter have been very supportive of legitimate
research initiatives, I'm hoping YouTube follows that trend!

~~~
pvankessel
To clarify - the current API has a limit of 10,000 "query points" per day for
new API keys (most endpoints cost 1-5 points per query). It used to be 1
million; they've since throttled everyone down and started forcing audits. 10k
is still something, but it certainly doesn't allow large scale research.

~~~
macromaniac
It used to be 50 million, it used to be 500000% more. I would have expected it
to increase as bandwidth got cheaper yet it for whatever reason has decreased.

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15568405/youtube-api-
lim...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15568405/youtube-api-limitations)

~~~
ammar_x
Wow. That makes me sad and suspicious. Why would they close themselves to this
degree? From 50 million to 10,000!

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angel_j
This is a lot of work for a lot of practically meaningless results. These are
only examples: The urls and social links in the descriptions. The "the" in the
titles. The other findings offer very little insight. Be popular, post videos.

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jcahill
My web archival group (nonprofit) has international trending data for the same
period. I've been meaning to get around to analysis for a while. This article
is a good point of reference.

~~~
ammar_x
Glad it helped. If possible, could you share your analysis results with us
after you finish?

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leereeves
> The minimum number of views a video had when it first became trending was
> 53,796 views.

How does that happen?

~~~
ammar_x
There is a video that had only 53,796 views on the day it became trending.
That video is "Phora - Don't Change [Official Music Video]". If you look at
the data, you find that it became trending on the same day it was published.
So before accumulating a large number of views, it became trending. Maybe it
acquired thousands of views very quickly which sent it to the trending list?
Maybe other factor.

~~~
markdown
Probably easily done if the publisher has a large fanbase and uses other
social media channels to send them all to Youtube the moment the video is
published.

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_ZeD_
I do wonder what would be the results for other countries - like in the EU
zone (it would be interesting, moreover, to see if / what are the differences
between denmark, germany, italian etc.. youtube trending videos)

~~~
ammar_x
I have the same data for Canada, Denmark, UK, Malaysia, and other 13
countries. I plan to analyze this data soon. So stay tuned.

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wolco
From my understanding any channels you subscribe to with new content/video
have a good chance to appear there. This is for the generic viewer.

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rienbdj
Cool analysis but I don’t think any interesting conclusions came from it.

