Happy birthday, Starships
One year ago tomorrow (or yesterday, depending on how you count it), I dove into making Starships!. As if to celebrate the occasion, this just happened:
I haven't been able to piece together a timeline of what led to what, but for some reason Starships! had a huge resurgence in popularity last week. By which I mean the Vimeo video went from 9,000 views (Aug.-Mar. total) to 34,800 35,300, and the YouTube version has garnered 2,700 views and 180 likes in its first week and a half. Together that makes it my most viewed vid ever. Measuring by hit count, the next most popular is, of all things, the SGA tentacles vid, at 27,500, and even that has 20,000 more than the third-most viewed (Satisfaction). LJ comments for Starships! also passed the 500 mark, which is about 350 more than any other of my fanworks has received as far as I can recall. o_o
Metrics, Google searches and tips from friends tell me that a tumblr post that had been around since August exploded, shooting up to 5,000 likes/reblogs (375 of which are comments, wow), including from the OTW and at least a couple of accounts that must be widely read (like albinwonderland?). The tumblr post got featured on TheMarySue.com last Wednesday, which led to other posts on individual blogs like this one. The vid also showed up on a Finnish TV site (second highest play count after tumblr and before TheMarySue), something called SourceFedNews, a French blog, and Facebook and Reddit, among other places.
It's awesome, although I'm still baffled as to what set it off. The vid had been up on YouTube for several days already, and the YouTube version isn't the one that's been making the rounds for the most part; ditto for the lyrics-to-clips chart timing; and Swancon and Muskrat Jamboree happened a couple of weeks earlier. *shrug* Not that it matters, in the end. I don't know how those kinds of numbers compare to other people's vids, but it's a thrill from where I'm sitting.
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Interesting things that occurred along the way:
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(And hopefully that all comes across as wanting to share the happy news instead of as bragging.)
I haven't been able to piece together a timeline of what led to what, but for some reason Starships! had a huge resurgence in popularity last week. By which I mean the Vimeo video went from 9,000 views (Aug.-Mar. total) to 34,800 35,300, and the YouTube version has garnered 2,700 views and 180 likes in its first week and a half. Together that makes it my most viewed vid ever. Measuring by hit count, the next most popular is, of all things, the SGA tentacles vid, at 27,500, and even that has 20,000 more than the third-most viewed (Satisfaction). LJ comments for Starships! also passed the 500 mark, which is about 350 more than any other of my fanworks has received as far as I can recall. o_o
Metrics, Google searches and tips from friends tell me that a tumblr post that had been around since August exploded, shooting up to 5,000 likes/reblogs (375 of which are comments, wow), including from the OTW and at least a couple of accounts that must be widely read (like albinwonderland?). The tumblr post got featured on TheMarySue.com last Wednesday, which led to other posts on individual blogs like this one. The vid also showed up on a Finnish TV site (second highest play count after tumblr and before TheMarySue), something called SourceFedNews, a French blog, and Facebook and Reddit, among other places.
It's awesome, although I'm still baffled as to what set it off. The vid had been up on YouTube for several days already, and the YouTube version isn't the one that's been making the rounds for the most part; ditto for the lyrics-to-clips chart timing; and Swancon and Muskrat Jamboree happened a couple of weeks earlier. *shrug* Not that it matters, in the end. I don't know how those kinds of numbers compare to other people's vids, but it's a thrill from where I'm sitting.
.
Interesting things that occurred along the way:
- Thanks to the third-party platforms, received objective feedback from strangers who may or may not have expected the vid creator to see what they said. Common criticisms: "This vid is invalid because Babylon 5/Red Dwarf/Andromeda/Lexx/anything anime/something else isn't in it." (I added a note to the Vimeo & YT posts saying that I agree but it was made under deadline, for what that might be worth.) "I hate the song, but this vid is still okay." "I hate the song, so you should play ___ instead while you watch the vid." It's been excellent to see that side of people's reactions, even when there's an itch to engage; and it's been excellent as well when others have replied to comments here and there with rebuttals or with background about the deadline etc.
- On the subject of fellow fans stepping in to support the creator: this tumblr post from greensilver about credit etiquette re: the original tumblr post, echoed in anatsuno's comment to TheMarySue post. Interesting stuff. Personally I want things to be credited, because credit is all we have here in non-monetary fandom. However, I hadn't thought beyond that to whether a label on an embedded video is enough or whether more attention should be given to attribution in the rec, other than that doing it in text makes it easier to ego-search, heh, and therefore to see comments from people who don't make it back to the original post.
- Learned a little about how tumblr works. Not enough to feel comfortable navigating it, but something, anyway.
- Discovered that at least three people linked George Takei to the vid on Facebook. ! My life would have been fulfilled if he'd reposted it, but having evidence that he might have watched it is plenty exciting.
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(And hopefully that all comes across as wanting to share the happy news instead of as bragging.)