The Rise of "Gangnam Style" - Embedly Stats | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of "Gangnam Style" - Embedly Stats

blog.embed.ly

55 pointsscreeley24 comments

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...), 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.

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.

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

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....

"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.

They're measuring the wrong thing. The TV shows are featuring PSY because he's already popular; they're using him to boost their own ratings. So the question is whether Ellen, SNL and Today saw online traffic spikes after featuring PSY, and I'll bet $5 that the answer is yes.

Mainstream TV shows are not there for discovery purposes; novelty is inversely correlated with audience size, because large audiences are the result of a repeatable formula. Hence the seemingly-endless syndication of comedy shows like Seinfeld, and the practice of distinguishing between 'all new' episodes (never-seen-before) and 'new' episodes (repeats that haven't been screened within the last couple of months).

It's ignorant to write off the producers of network shows as dinosaurs. They are still churning out a new show every week or several times a week, they have huge audiences, and they are making more money than you could ever dream about. I find most of those shows dull, but I'm not the target market and neither are you.

PSY has the most popular video in the history of YouTube and all his other output is going to see a bump in popularity as a result. It's great for his long-term career, but in terms of mass culture it's a flash in the pan (at least outside of Korea). 2 years ago the 'fist pump' song by Hardnox inspired by the TV show Jersey Shore was the summer sensation, played at baseball stadiums and so on. Now the show is ending and I'm pretty sure you'll never hear of Hardnox again until they show up on nostalgia shows (like 'I love 2010!'). On the other hand, Ellen, SNL and the Today show will probably be around in ten years; at most the name or personality will change, but the format will persist. Jay Leno, Dave Letterman, Jimmy Fallon and Conan O'Brien are all basically repeating the Johnny Carson formula for light evening entertainment, and that concept has been chugging along steadily for about 30-40 years now.

Damn! I accidentally downvoted you because on touch devices like the iPad the arrows are really tiny and really close together and you can't change your vote.

Don't worry, someone else probably accidentally upvoted me so it all works out in the end. I have the same problem on my tablet, HN is not that friendly as a mobile site.

Upvoted to make up for it.

It is a category mistake to expect a TV appearance to acutely drive views of an online video.

This is because TV is analog and there's no link to click on when PSY is on Ellen. This also means that the ratio of people who are driven to watch his video online because he was on TV is very small.

Of those people who end up watching the video because they saw him on TV, their views are likely dispersed over a long period of time rather than at a single moment like they might be when an article on a very large web portal like Yahoo directly links to the video.

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.

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.

How else would they have brought him into the sketch? It was pretty brilliant IMO.

> 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.

That's because their viewers are much the same.

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.

Friday. And I just lost the game.

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

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

This is what saddens me a little. As a person who started listening to PSY (amongst other Korean artists) over the past two years all he will be known for in the western world is Gangnam Style.

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.

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

Yeah that looks great.

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...

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

edit2: it's embed.ly, not refer.ly, sorry about that.

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...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com