Viral Video Prediction Made Fun with TubeRank

Viral Ad Network's TubeRank officially came onto the scene yesterday, with an application on their website that lets you see examples of successful videos based on a number of emotional triggers that you enter into their database.  If you're a content creator who wants to make a certain kind of video, and you have all the emotional triggers in place, you can figure out how well other videos that have similar qualities have fared.  I must say, even if you're not looking to create content, it's a fun way to spend some time, as the results that come up make for good video discovery.  Let's take a look at TubeRank.

TubeRank: Cooking Up the Formula for Viral Success

They built this app based on the research done in this slide presentation.  There are 10 triggers and 14 interests you can choose from, and you can use as many as you want.  There is also an option to find "user generated content" or "branded" content.  On my first try, I decided I was just going to go for Loads of LOL and see what popped up:

The video that pops up is the funny video with Nick Offerman about "Movember."  It gives you views, share view ratio, comments/view ratio, dislikes/likes ratio, and Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ shares.  If you join their service, you can get even more insight into videos you are curious about.  Underneath all of this you get a whole bunch of other videos and their stats.

But that's just a simple experiment.  Remember, you're the one trying to make content and you have an idea of all the emotional triggers, so throw all those in the database and see what comes up.  I thought I would play around and I chose "Kawaii," (cuteness) and "NSFW" at the same time, just to see what would come up.  Maybe I was afraid of what would come up.  But something definitely appropriate appeared in the window: Remember when Samuel L. Jackson read aloud "Go the F*** to Sleep?"  He did another video for Barack Obama during the election called, "Wake the F*** Up," which contains more bleeped swear words than an average Gordon Ramsey cooking show.  But it's funny, for sure, and oddly cute.

Here are all the triggers and interests you can play around with:

Triggers (Emotional Responses You're Looking For)

• LOL
• WTF
• EPIC
• Kawaii (cuteness)
• Moving
• Talent
• Referential
• Topical
• NSFW
• Educational

Interests (What Is Your Audience Interested In?)

• General Interest
• Automotive
• Fashion/Beauty
• Film
• Gaming
• Music
• Parenting
• Pop Culture
• Sport
• Student
• Geek
• Travel
• Internet Culture
• Activist

So this has a comprehensive set of parameters to go for, and it's fun to play around with.  I saw a few videos I didn't even know about before messing around with this thing.  So even for pure video discovery, TubeRank is fun to use.  Give it a try here.