The LisaNova Explosion

[jayhenry]

I've recently been tracking the most-subscribed list. The rise and fall of YouTube stars isn't always very intuitive.

Take LisaNova: she hasn't posted a video since Oct. 28, about the whole Rush Limbaugh-Michael J. Fox-Parkinson's thing. On Nov. 12 she had 14,314 subscribers. On Nov. 19, it had risen to 14,681 -- a little over 300 in a week, pretty standard growth for somebody in the top-20.

Then, something happened.

Does anyone have any idea what? I have no clue. but as of today she has 18,631, and she's 8th place all time. In 4 days. 1,000 subscribers a day is pretty rapid growth. Almost impossible growth on the YouTube charts.

[hyemew]

Umm wow what the heck. That's suspicious to the extreme..

[Terryfic]

Likely she just got some outside press like TheHill88 did shortly before she had a big subscriber jump. As I see it the two most typical reasons for a big jump in subscribers is either getting a video featured or getting written about in the Press.

[lesbrent]

or cheating!

No, I'm not accusing her - it's just weird.

[jayhenry]

terryfic said:

Likely she just got some outside press like TheHill88 did shortly before she had a big subscriber jump. As I see it the two most typical reasons for a big jump in subscribers is either getting a video featured or getting written about in the Press.

I've been watching this too, Terry. But using Google, Technorati and Nexis I can't find any evidence she was mentioned anywhere in the last couple weeks.

Similarly with TheHill88, she had been mentioned a couple weeks before her surge, but did have a series of videos that hit the most-viewed lists, about her date or her friend that new Paris Hilton or something. I don't know. I don't like TheHill. But her exposure from those videos wasn't enough to explain her 5,000 viewer explosion.

I almost wonder if whatever YouTube uses to count viewers doesn't work very well. Perhaps they periodically run recounts. I don't know.

Related to top-subscribed list: here's something I just learned. Normally, you can only see the Top-40. But actually, YouTube tracks the top-100.

Here's 41-60:

www.youtube.com/members?s=ms&t=a&g=0&p=3

From here you can get to 61-100. You can do it for monthly and weekly lists if you, for some reason, desire.

The last part of that url, p=x is the page number. If you manually change p=1 to p=3 it takes you to the rest of the top-100.

[Smashing]

Thanks, jay, I've long been curious about seeing farther down the list. I don't know why they would show only the top 40 anyway. I see that CiW comes in at number 100.
When RyanLeslie was suspended, investigated, then reinstated he said something about how it's not unusual for there to be sudden jumps in subscribers. The conventional wisdom on him was that he would tell everybody at his concerts to subscribe, whereas LisaNova doesn't have any live show that I know of.
YouTube videos are viral creatures, embeddable, emailable. If your video makes the rounds in MySpace bulletins, in wouldn't show up in any internet search, and could very quickly reach tens of thousands. Sometimes viral videos sit in plain site on the internet for months or even years before they get "discovered" by well connected people and then reach a tipping point.
Then again, the list could just be a flawed system like you said, and the numbers do lie.

[milowent]

jayhenry said:

Related to top-subscribed list: here's something I just learned. Normally, you can only see the Top-40. But actually, YouTube tracks the top-100.

Here's 41-60:

www.youtube.com/members?s=ms&t=a&g=0&p=3

From here you can get to 61-100. You can do it for monthly and weekly lists if you, for some reason, desire.

The last part of that url, p=x is the page number. If you manually change p=1 to p=3 it takes you to the rest of the top-100.

Thanks, Jay. Good to know. Youtubers on the way up and down

-- Lazydork gets on CNN last month, but is now at #42.
-- Morbeck used to be on the 2nd page (20-40), is now at #54.
-- Paytotheorderofofof2 is at #65 (4301 subscribers)
-- WeHoGirls is #83
-- Paperliles is #100

[jayhenry]

Back to LisaNova. She added 1,000 subscribers a day in the four days leading up to Nov. 23 and 18,631 subscribers. As of this morning, four days after Nov. 23, she has 18,873 subscribers.

So for four days she added 1,000 subscribers a day and then for 4 days she added 50. Interest in LisaNova spiked, overnight, to 5 percent of its previous levels? Beyond suspicious.

[hyemew]

milo, speaking of lazydork, I saw him last night on FOXNews. Some show called the mad house, err I don't know what it was called because I've never heard of it before. It was on at like 8 or something, didn't look like one of their heavy-hitters.
LazyDork was proudly lauding the 1 million views he's gotten, and then said to the host "that's more than your show!" I was like ouch, he invites you onto his show and then you shut him down on national tv? That was NOT cool, I've never liked lazydork (though I haven't seen many of his videos beyond his rap hating on Bree.

[milowent]

jayhenry said:

Back to LisaNova. She added 1,000 subscribers a day in the four days leading up to Nov. 23 and 18,631 subscribers. As of this morning, four days after Nov. 23, she has 18,873 subscribers.

So for four days she added 1,000 subscribers a day and then for 4 days she added 50. Interest in LisaNova spiked, overnight, to 5 percent of its previous levels? Beyond suspicious.

that is bizarre. her last video was posted october 28.

[jayhenry]

I'm still stuck on my Meet the Press comparison, and a way to keep the whole YouTube thing in perspective. I was using the figure that Meet the Press draws about 4 million viewers a week to its Sunday broadcast in the US alone, and about 2 million catch each show in rebroadcasts, across the various networks and in other countries, into perpetuity.

Think about this another way: take the top-100 viewed videos on YouTube, the entire list, and add up the total views since the site launched in February, 2005. The entire top-100 list has a combined global view-count a little shy of 500,000,000.

In that same period of time, Meet the Press has nearly 600,000,000 in the United States alone.

So, while YouTube boasts impressive numbers, it's worth putting in perspective that it's entire top-100 is not yet as popular as Meet the Press.

Hmm... this is fun... I think I should launch a weekly numbers column.