What makes something go viral? | Dao Nguyen

Pranking the Boss with Baby Goats

In this section, the speaker shares a story about how BuzzFeed employees planned to prank their boss on his birthday by putting baby goats in his office. The event was livestreamed and unexpectedly gained a large viewership.

Livestreaming the Goat Prank

• The employees decided to put baby goats in their boss's office as a prank.

• They livestreamed the event on the internet to capture their boss's reaction.

• Initially, they expected only a few hundred company employees to watch.

• However, due to delays in their boss's arrival, more and more people started logging in to watch.

• By the time their boss walked in, over 90,000 viewers were watching the livestream.

Analyzing the Success of the Goat Video

In this section, the speaker discusses why the goat prank video became so successful and outperformed their expectations.

Understanding Viewer Engagement

• Despite not being their biggest live video, the goat prank video performed exceptionally well.

• The team analyzed viewer comments during the livestream and hypothesized that people were excited because they were participating in shared anticipation.

• Being part of a community for an instant made viewers happy.

Testing Hypotheses with Another Video

• To test their hypothesis further, they conducted another experiment involving a popular topic: food videos.

• They dressed two people in hazmat suits and wrapped rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded.

• This video attracted 800,000 viewers and became BuzzFeed's biggest Facebook Live event at that time.

Understanding Virality from Audience Perspective

In this section, the speaker challenges the notion of making something go viral and emphasizes understanding what audiences are thinking while consuming content.

Shifting Focus to Audience Perspective

• The question of how to make something go viral is misplaced.

• Instead, it's crucial to consider what the audience is thinking and feeling while consuming content.

• Most media companies focus on metadata related to subjects or formats, but this doesn't capture what truly matters.

Cultural Cartography: Categorizing Content by Job

• BuzzFeed started a project called "cultural cartography" to categorize content based on the job it does for the reader or viewer.

• They created a map with bubbles representing specific jobs and grouped them by related jobs' colors.

• Examples of job categories include humor, identity, connection with others, helping users do something, and evoking emotions.

Jobs of Media Content

In this section, the speaker explains different jobs that media content can fulfill for its audience.

Humor: Making People Laugh

• Media content can make people laugh in various ways, such as through internet humor or clean jokes.

• Making someone laugh helps them connect with the content and find amusement.

Identity: Expressing Who We Are

• Media allows individuals to express their identity by sharing aspects of their upbringing, culture, fandoms, and even laughing at themselves.

• It helps people define who they are and find relatability in the content.

Connection with Others: Strengthening Bonds

• One of the greatest gifts of the internet is using media to connect with others.

• When people find media that precisely describes their bond with someone else, it strengthens their connection.

Helping Users Do Something & Evoking Emotions

• Media can help users settle arguments, learn about themselves or others, explain personal stories, evoke curiosity or sadness,

and restore faith in humanity.

• By putting themselves in their audiences' shoes and facilitating conversations between people through media,

companies can create deeper connections among individuals.

Pick an Outfit and We'll Guess Your Exact Age and Height

This section of the transcript discusses a quiz titled "Pick an Outfit and We'll Guess Your Exact Age and Height."

Quiz Description

• The quiz is about picking an outfit.

• It claims to be able to guess your exact age and height based on your outfit choices.

How the Quiz Works

• Users are presented with different outfit options.

• They need to select their preferred outfits from each set of choices.

• Based on their selections, the quiz will make predictions about their age and height.

Purpose of the Quiz

• The purpose of the quiz is to provide entertainment by guessing users' age and height based on their fashion preferences.

Timestamp: