United Breaks Guitars Viral Analysis
By Brett Serjeantson, MediaMiser Ltd.
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Follow me: http://twitter.com/BSerjeantson
Synopsis
On July 6, 2009, Sons of Maxwell, a band from Nova Scotia, posted a protest music video on Youtube, recounting its negative experiences with United Airlines.
The music video, United Breaks Guitars, immediately started to attract attention on Youtube and in other social media, such as blogs and Twitter.
The quality of the song and production, coupled with a catchy tune chronicling the real life aggravations of the band's front man Dave Carroll, made the light-hearted 'David and Goliath' online music video an instant hit on the web.
Traffic to the video grew steadily, but real interest in the video and United Airlines' handling of the incident did not spike until two days later on July 8, when seemingly, the mainstream media took notice.
By mid-day July 8, the video had been viewed over 135,000 times on Youtube.
That's a lot of views for that amount of time. However, by July 10, after the story had hit the mainstream media, the number of views was up to more than 1.7 million.
The story was featured on primetime news broadcasts and print media outlets across North America and on many of the traditional media's online news sites.
Between July 8 and July 10, the story appeared in approximately 339 mainstream online news sites and approximately 777 blogs.
During this period, there were also over 2000 tweets (Twitter posts). Of those tweets, over 86% linked to either the original video on Youtube or to another web site.
Just under half of the links were to the Youtube video and the rest linked to news sites or blogs, most notably a story on NBC Chicago's web site (50), further highlighting the viral effect the mainstream media can have.
By July 11, the views on Youtube were still strong, but were in decline until July 23 to July 24, when the story was picked up by media outlets in England and Ireland. On the July 23, views on Youtube peaked at over 160,000 for the day, and daily views hit more than 180,000 on the 24.
After July 24, the views on Youtube again started to decline, down to just over 45,000 a day as of July 31. The video has averaged about 20,000 views per day for the month of August.
Data of interest
- Approximately 15-16% of Tweets about United Breaks Guitars were retweeted, compared to a Twitter average of approximately 9%.
- 86% of Tweets about United Breaks Guitars referenced web addresses, compared to a Twitter average of approximately 40%.
- The top tweeters pertaining to United Breaks Guitars for the month of July were GuitarForever (129), GuitarSafes (50), and jenghauser (30).
- The top 3 user handles that tweeted about the incident for the month of July were mashable (1,080,653), adventuregirl (800,229), and zoecello (697,603).
- The top 3 user handles that were retweeted the most were mashable (121), DaveCarroll (28), and shelisrael (25).
- Total number of online news stories for the month of July: 625.
- Total number of blog postings pertaining to United Breaks Guitars for the month of July: 1,662.
- Total number of tweets pertaining to United Breaks Guitars for the month of July: 5,980.
- For the month of July, next to the actual link to the Youtube video, the link to the mashable blog was the most referenced with 271.
- The most referenced hash tag or group was united.
- The top three mentioned words were united, breaks, and guitars.
- Total amount of views for United Breaks Guitars for the month of July: 4,524,334.
- The United Breaks Guitars issue represented 42% of all online news for United Airlines for the month of July.
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| The graph shows the different media and how they could be potentially influencing each other and driving traffic to the Youtube video. Notice how blogs tend to be the early influencers. However, traditional media, in this case represented by online news, seems to have a more profound influence both on Twitter and in driving traffic to Youtube. That said, it is possible that even though online news is influencing Twitter, Twitter in turn could be influencing Youtube through posted links. It should also be noted on the chart that clearly online news from the UK and Ireland around July 23 had an effect on Twitter. Again, this was backed up by the volume of posted links originating from UK sites in Twitter. Furthermore, views on Youtube also increased around this time. |
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| The pie chart shows the breakdown of the different issues in online news for United Airlines for the month of July. United Breaks Guitars issue dominated the news for United Airlines. |
Conclusions
The United Breaks Guitars video is an excellent example of how grassroots campaigns can go 'viral' across a spectrum of media and how different media can influence each other.
In the case of United Breaks Guitars, a well-crafted video was placed on Youtube and struck a chord with key influencers on the web. The primary influencers at the beginning of the campaign seemed to be from the blogosphere.
Blogs
Bloggers tend to be great influencers. A lot of journalists in the mainstream media are also bloggers. Many other bloggers who are not part of the so-called mainstream media view themselves as equal to traditional journalists. Even though many people are moving away from blogs to express themselves on other social media, the influence of blogs can't be ignored.
This is clearly evident in the case of the United Breaks Guitars video, where the blogospere seemed to help spread the word of the Youtube video.
What role did Twitter play?
Many claim that Twitter has an influence on both traditional and other new media. In the case of the United Breaks Guitars video, it is possible that Twitter might have alerted certain mainstream media journalists. Many people are turning from newsreaders to Twitter to help keep up with issues and events. However, in the case of United Breaks Guitars, it is clear that the mainstream media had a greater influence on Twitter than Twitter had on the mainstream media.
This might be hard to prove during the initial spike, even though nearly half the tweets during that time referenced news or blog sites. That said, one could claim Twitter could have influenced the mainstream media, since almost 40% of the tweets referenced only Youtube. However, during the smaller spike in activity from July 23 to July 24, research showed that it was almost only mainstream media in England and Ireland covering the story.
During this same period, activity picked up in Twitter, mimicking the spike in mainstream online media.
Again, one could argue that this was a coincidence and that maybe Twitter influenced these media outlets. However, the research also showed that almost all the embedded links in the tweets referenced mostly online publications, clearly proving that mainstream media had more of an influence on Twitter in the case of United Breaks Guitars than vice versa.
This does not mean that Twitter had no influence, but in this case, the mainstream media clearly influenced Twitter. However, it still quite possible, especially with a large number of references linking to Youtube, blogs, and news sites, that Twitter had a profound influence on the United Breaks Guitars video and its ability to influence should not be underestimated.
Like bloggers, many users of Twitter are involved in other media and are key influencers. So the question arises: how do you identify key influencers?
Some view key influencers by the number of followers for a user handle. However, this value can be deceiving. A more accurate evaluation is identifying how many times someone has been retweeted or referenced.
mashable
In the case of United Breaks Guitars, mashable was reweeted 121 times for the month of July and even though retweets is a more accurate way of measuring influence, mashable also had the largest number of followers out of all the handles that tweeted about United Breaks Guitars.
Furthermore, for the month of July, besides Youtube, more people referenced the mashable blog than any other source, further highlighting the power of cross-media influence and the influence that blogs still have the on web and the media in general.