Bumped from the diaries -- Jonathan
(I blog at RunObama.com)
Chris higlighted Micah Sifry from Personal Democracy Forum's Tech President on his post on the Obama 1984 YouTube video earlier today. The 1984 Obama video has exploded across the internet in the last week, hopping from 100,000 views last week to almost 400,000 at around 2pm today. At 11:56pm it has 748,546 views (though I suspect there's a bit of lag in YouTube updating since it was also at that number at 11:02pm).
A second copy of the video (not the original), the one that the Drudge Report is linking to, now has 240,131 views. That's over 988,677 views. Technorati tracks over 1,040 blogs linked to the video (both copies) now.
Following the anatomy of this viral explosion today is fascinating.
Much of the attention was galvanized by the article in the San Francisco Chronicle that came out today on the video. Major blogs that posted on the video's article within the last day included Political Wire, Kevin Drum at Political Animal/Washington Monthly, TPM Cafe, the Gothamist, Mediabistro, and many more (and growing). In a huge indication that it's spreading outside of the political blogosphere, I even saw it posted on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), the go to blog for Apple news. And not to mention the mainstream attention brought on by the Drudge Report and Time.com's the Swamp, where it "wow"ed the ever-constant barometer of conventional DC wisdom, Joe Klein.
But why this trend?
One thing that makes me think this was not a G.O.P. hit is the viral flow pattern. I first saw the ad on MyDD, right before it jumped to Josh Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo, on March 5. Those are pro-Democratic sites, and that's the same day other Democratic political technologists started getting the ad e-mailed to them. I asked Josh via instant messenger where he got the link from, and he says a friend of his who knew the ad's creators sent it to him and that "the person assured me the creators were not tied to a campaign or a political org" and that "i took it as a given that they were dems [given who was doing the iming] and that they liked obama and that that was the point of their creating the video."
I am actually pretty sure the order was vice-versa, as Jonathan Singer pointed the video out to me because he had noticed it at TPM, which I Breaking Blued (no link cause I have no idea where to find BB archives), which Stoller then put in an post.
It had been gaining views over the last few weeks and at one point had been the #3 most watched video on YouTube. But in the fractured two-second attention-span of the blogosphere, it kind of faded from memory for most of us. Today, as the video went viral, the main reaction from many I queried in the political blogosphere was "Oh that, I saw that weeks ago."
It looks like the video went viral within the political blogosphere and Obama supporters and eventually gained enough momentum to gather attention from a mainstream media reporter and not one from the NYT or WaPo, which one might have expected to draw this kind of attention. That article then ignited a second viral evolution. The question is...could or would the video have achieved the same level of success without the San Francisco Chronicle article?
And the mystery behind the video is also intriguing. Who is the creator, "ParkRidge47?" Micah investigated this a while back and wrote:
I emailed "ParkRidge47" yesterday asking him or her for some background on how they made the video and why, and here's what s/he said:But Garance notes a unique coincidence:Thank you for your interest in the video. It has been amazing to watch it explode on the viral scene. At one point it was the #3 most watched video on YouTube and is at 108,000 views and growing.
Considering Hillary Clinton's biggest video has only received 12,000 views on YouTube, I'd say the grassroots has won the first round.
The idea was simple and so was the execution. Make a bold statement about the Democratic primary race by culture jacking a famous commercial and replacing as few images as possible. For some people it doesn't register, but for people familiar with the ad and the race it has obviously struck a chord.
The original poster of the video on YouTube appears to be someone calling him or herself ParkRidge47, aged 59. Park Ridge is both a town in New Jersey and -- this can't just be a coincidence, right? -- the suburb of Chicago where Hillary Clinton, also aged 59, was raised.
Other theories abound (Singer claims its a Pomona College graduate due to the inclusion of the number 47 in the username).
The ad is impressive from a technical point of view and I originally told Garance that:
[Adam's] best guess: that it came from "someone with previous high-tech editing skills, maybe hollywood?... they would've had to get a high quality copy of the original ad too i would imagine." The original ad, of course, is this 1984 Superbowl ad for Apple, which heralded the release of the MacIntosh computer on Jan. 24, 1984. That ad was directed by Ridley Scott (who, conspiracy mavens will note, more recently did the CGI-intensive Gladiator for Dreamworks SKG, which was co-founded by Obama donor David Geffen).
The Unoffical Apple Weblog noted that the video footage was not from the original 1984 Mac Ad but from an updated 2004 ad:
At the 2004 MacWorld Expo, Steve Jobs showed a digitally updated version of the original Mac-only commercial to add the iPod with its signature white earbuds. The Obama commercial uses this updated version.
With this knowledge, and upon closer examination, this makes the technical aspects of the creating the ad less daunting, but still very impressive. Specifically not having to find, digitize, and clean up a quality copy of the 1984 ad, not having to *ahem* digitally simulated a moving chest with the Obama logo (just add on-top of the Apple logo), etc. But still, very very impressive. Looks like I was right about one thing: "Adam Conner, a blogger with RunObama.com, pointed the finger to Hollywood. "I can't imagine any campaign ever being brave enough to officially authorize it or any political media firm with the skills to create it." As Obama told Larry King tonight: "Well, the -- we knew nothing about it. I just saw it for the first time. And, you know, one of the things about the Internet is that people generate all kinds of stuff. In some ways, it's -- it's the democratization of the campaign process. But it's not something that we had anything to do with or were aware of and that frankly, given what it looks like, we don't have the technical capacity to create something like that. It's pretty extraordinary."
And what of the broad implications of this phenomenon? I actually think that Joe Klein hits it on the head when he said:
This is pretty amazing, and very effective, I think. It's increasingly apparent that the Great Divide in 2008 isn't black v. white, or male v. female, but young v. old.
[. . .]
I wouldn't have the skills or sensibility to do it this way; very few in my generation would. I disagreed--quietly, in a loyal and seemly fashion--with Time's Person of the Year last December. But ads like this one, which will have an impact on this campaign, indicate that I was wrong. You are, apparently, not only the Person of the Year, but also the Political Consultants of the future.
As I wrote about the ad this morning on my blog, RunObama.com:
This ad is especially intriguing because it combines some of the strongest elements of technology, politics, and bottom-up empowered political campaigning into one brilliant example. The lowered barrier of technology has created the ability for an "amateur" video editor to create a professional ad that would put most to shame (unless this turns out to be the work of someone like ILM). The viral level distribution from sites like YouTube, which gained so much political notoriety with Senator Allen's Macaca moment, proves its potential for candidate supportive message. And it call came from an independent supporter unaffiliated with the Obama campaign and distributed through the bottom-up grassroots people-powered effort growing around Obama's candidacy. Expect to see more like this in the future.
So there you have it, the anatomy, mystery, and possible deeper implications of one YouTube video. I sure hope I don't end up writing posts this long on every campaign 2008 viral video.
(Adam Conner blogs at RunObama.com and co-hosts MyDD Blog Talk Radio on Sunday's at 7pm)
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