The Viral tag
The viral tag. I had a bit of a chat via comments with both Krupo and joedirt now, and I'd like some clarification on its use. The Krupo tagged video resolved simply enough, with my end opinion being that viral should be applied to any commercial, whether or not it's a viral campaign. That sounds a fair compromise, for as Krupo pointed out, some people like to use that tag to filter advertisements.
The second time, a video I posted got tagged as viral by joedirt, and that was a tad confusing for me. As joedirt pointed out, he sees anything which he considers "viral", an ad campaign or otherwise, as something he would tag as viral. I think it might be good to get some kind of community consensus on this. I realize that there have been issues with tagging before, and I don't mean to end this, only bring it up for consideration.
Wikipedia has a good page on the viral phenomenon here, and has definitions for "viral marketing" and "viral video".
My opinion is this: while it would be tempting to attempt to single out "viral" videos of all kinds and apply the tag to any videos that seem to fit the description, I think we'd end up tagging nearly everything on the sift. In fact, in the viral video page linked from the wikipedia page I just linked above, it lists the sources of viral videos and it's basically a superset of the video hosts supported by videosift. I think it is much easier and a line can more clearly be drawn on advertisements (viral or otherwise) rather than the "viral-ness" of a video. Therefore I would suggest the tag only be used for advertisements, which matches up with the description of the viral tag in the FAQ (except it says for viral campaigns rather than all advertisements).
What does everyone else think?
18 Comments
James RoeI would agree with the advertising angle, we primarily added it so that people could flag out advertisements that they did not want to see. I would also agree that the concept of "viral" is pretty nebulous, and one that would see a lot of latitude in its concept from different members.
arrendekI think my overall suggestion then would be to change the "viral" tag to an "advertisement" tag, for clarification.
James Roebut "viral" is so web 2.0
arrendekLOL wasn't there just a post here about "web two point oo-eeyness" that went the other way?
James Roeyeah that's why it got the
face
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
I think viral is probably the right term - because sometimes things are put up that are not easily identifiable as "commercials" but do in fact turn out to be promoting something.
arrendekWhat about the non-advertising use of the term viral?
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
You mean - like Herpes? Do you think we need a channel for that?
arrendekNo, like here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_video
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
ah, sorry. I think that viral definition is a bit too broad - and would cover large swathes of VideoSift's content.
arrendekRight, but for some (see the second video linked above) the tag "viral" implies that use. That's what I'm talking about.
James RoeYeah, that's what I was trying to say in my first post. I think the advertising angle is the one we are going for. I dislike the idea of just calling them ads though because some of them are entertaining. I think increasingly all promotional ads will attempt to be viral anyway. So as time passes they will all fall into that category.
Krupoarrendek, you did make a *quality point, because technically everything on here is viral. We reserve it for marketing campaigns and videos which are notable for the fact that they ARE viral - i.e., they got news coverage because of how widespread they are, or are known throughout the 'internets' for their online rise to fame. We have a bit of latitude with all definitions but I think the nature of the channel as it stands is becoming fairly well defined. Also, there was talk of making an advertisement or commerce channel, but this is what the Sift Founders decided on. Not to mention not all advertisements qualify for this channel, actually. See the logic I share here -
http://www.videosift.com/video/Phil-Hartman-in-Atari-2600-Ice-Hockey-game-commerical
Wikipedia, you must remember, is not videosift (and vice versa, heh). Their definitions must suit their criteria - being broad enough to include whatever is the term that gets the broadest consensus, really.
<high horse>
At videosift, we are specialists of the art of sifting through videos, which a layperson would be unable to distinguish as being one type or another. It's a byproduct of the stars, the voting, the whole system.
</high horse>
So although you are correct that modern ads for modern products are generally all viral, older ads sifted out of nostalgia such as the Atari clip clearly aren't. You may argue, convincingly, that Atari's current company gets a PR boost even when you discuss their older products, and if it was clear that this was part of their campaign to remember their 'golden oldies' or whatever, then it would totally be appropriate to label it viral.
You'll probably see some contradictorily-labelled clips on the Sift, though, as siftbot went around doing some auto-tagging, but I say the system works as it stands.
siftbotGold Star member Krupo has awarded arrendek one published post for this quality Sift Talk contribution.
joedirtI'll add that there is often *channel abuse. There is tons of crap marked cute, that just isn't. And everything that may have a soundtrack in the background doesn't need music. ETc.
Just FYI, if I see the next SWK video, or numa numa dude come through, I'm marking it viral. There are about 60 people that have the power to disagree
joedirtMy point being that it isn't that big of a deal, doesn't need a debate. Just change it as you see fit, and when we have a good ol fashion star war, it'll end up on the blog.
arrendekI'm starting to see the wisdom in that argument joe.
Krupojoedirt, good point with swk/numa - those are a crystal clear illustration of "viral for viral's sake" or whatever you want to label my 'we'll call it viral even if it's not a commercial for reason X' argument which I can't neatly summarize at the moment but ... you know what I'm talking about you.
I support that point of view.
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