Viral Videos of 2013

The DailyMotion video above is a compilation of some of the biggest viral videos of 2013. But unlike many others (like the YouTube one I posted two weeks ago), it tells you how many views the videos have received and isn’t a mash-up. I think that makes it more interesting.

I’ve seen many of the videos included, but not all. That’s true pretty much every year, actually. Still, I’ve posted some of them here, too because if I like a video, I’ll share it.

I almost posted the video below when it was new back in September. While the fact a video is an ad doesn’t normally stop me, I passed. It turns out it was one of the most viewed Kiwi viral video of 2013.

The reason I didn’t post the ad is that I thought it was fake—I have say I don’t know that it was faked, it’s just that it seemed too convenient. I watched the longer version, and nothing in it made it any more believable to me. So, because it struck me as an ad pretending to be real by pretending to be genuine social media, I didn’t post it.

What do I know? The video has now had over 4.4 million views, making it, according to YouTube, the third most-watched Kiwi viral video (the top two were not from New Zealand). Fake or not, people clearly like it.

And by posting this with my negative commentary, I think I’ve established, first, that sometimes I get the public mood wrong, and second, that even I have my limits and fakery and pretending to be genuine social media push beyond them. That’s not so much about his video as it is a forewarning for marketers in 2014—unless your video is really, really good, of course.