In this day and age where anyone can post a video to the world through the power of YouTube, the ability to stand out is becoming increasingly difficult. Every minute, 48 hours of videos are being uploaded on YouTube, of that, only a very tiny percentage of videos makes it to the 1 million+ views. In a Ted Talk by Kevin Allocca, You Tube Trends Manager discusses the three ingredients needed for any video to make it big. First is tastemakers. The success of YouTube stars are often propelled by someone famous, otherwise known as tastemakers. For example, the day Jimmy Kimmel tweeted about the rainbow video by Yosemitebear Mountain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI), views of the video skyrocketed exponentially to its current 32 million views. The second ingredient is participation. No video makes it big without public viewing and engagement. Often time, this involvement comes in Facebook postings, Twitter and linkedin updates and remake of videos. Rebecca Black’s 200 million views came about through the public’s engagement. WIthin one week of the video release, there were already parodies for every day of the week. Finally, perhaps the most obvious one, is unexpectedness. Attention is a rare commodity in our busy and overloaded world and being unexpected gives you that much edge on other videos.

While these three ingredients are helpful, there is really no magic formula to getting viral. Sometimes, it just takes a bit of luck. Or a lot.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BpxVIwCbBK0#!