Mashable has found two interesting infographics that deal with viral elements. The first one was made by Brian Sieber using data from The Jun Group, and it focuses on how videos go viral. The second is from Lab42, who did a study on how American social medias watch video, specifically television. Take a look after the break.
Some of the results above are rather surprising, with females watching more viral videos than men, and Southerners watching more videos than any region. It isn’t surprising, however, to see Facebook as the leading way to share video. How do you learn about and share viral videos?
While the answers to this survey seem pretty straight forward and understandable in hindsight, the one thing I took away from this is that newer technology is making it easier for people to watch more television in general. Whether it be the Internet, DVRs, or easy access to DVD sets, more television is available on demand. I was surprised, however, that YouTube dominates the online landscape for watching television shows, especially when there are free or cheap legal alternatives (like Hulu and Netflix) for the mass majority of series. What are your TV watching habits? Do you use any of the websites, or do you DVR?
It seems like relatively few small-scale video producers have used viral videos to market the videos they sell, even despite the growing prevalence of social networking sites. The site FargoTube.com hosts videos, allows the copyright owner — whether amateur or professional — to charge, and provides social-networking functions that promote sharing.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the responses to the question about the hours of TV watched are actually understating the total. Depending on the question order, most people probably did not think of catching an episode of Psyche on Hulu as “watching TV”. Seeing a show on the big screen tethered to a cable is likely what most of them had in mind.