FIRST KISS is an intimate video exhibiting a number of complete strangers sharing a - you guessed it - first kiss.
Have you seen it?
And... here it is.
Which have you seen?
Didn't quite catch the difference?
You'll notice that these are in fact two uploads of the same video; one by Tatia Pllieva, the film's maker, and one by Melissa Coker of WREN, the 'presenter' of the video.
The first of these uploads has over 19 million views, over 125,000 thumbs-up, countless comments, and has been featured on high-profile sites such as Mashable, Devour, Time, Huffington Post, The Independent, Slate, Gizmodo, HighSnobriety, CBC, Business Insider, Heavy, and now RGB Social and Social Media Today (ha! Sorry... had to).
The second of these uploads has not. It's achieved 181 views, 0 thumbs-up, and about 39 likes, 14 shares and 4 comments on Facebook.
Huh.
The same video, uploaded by the two parties responsible for its creation, and they have dramatically different results.
It's impossible to pinpoint exactly why these videos are on such different galaxies as it pertains to their success, but there are a few observations worth making here:
The viral video was uploaded first - roughly a day earlier
The viral video was the one uploaded to a YouTube channel with an existing community - close to 19,000 subscribers
The viral video was shared by prominent online media outlets and tastemakers - some of which are listed above
I've previously written in more detail about how some of these things can affect a video's likelihood of going 'viral', so I'll not blather on about it here.
Anyway, interesting stuff.
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Why do you think these videos have achieved such dramatically different levels of success?
Is there anything that this has taught you about content promotion?
What do you think about this video?
As always, it would be great to hear your thoughts in the comments, or on Twitter @RGBSocial