The Internet was the result of some thinking by people in the early 1960s who saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields.
Despite the fact that the internet has been around for 50 years in theory, it didn't really start to take off as a real force of communication until the early naughties. In the year 2000, only 7% of the world population was using the internet. Perhaps a more appropriate statistic is that 30% of the developed world were. Only 10 years later, just under a fifth of the internets lifetime, that number had risen to over double at 67%. Perhaps what's more interesting is that, while it's usage in the developed world had doubled in that particular period, it's usage in the world as a whole had more more than quadrupled, going from 7% to 30% of the world population. Statistics like these show how much of a global force the internet is. Essentially, it allows people in the poorer areas West Africa to use the same global resources as the upper classes in the posher areas of London or Monaco. This can only be a good thing.
That said, the two charts below show that the internet is still a very western-based deity.
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| Internet Users By Spoken Language |
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| Internet Content By Language |
As you can see, the internet is mainly an English-based resource, but these sort of statistics aren't necessarily reflective of how useful the internet is to people who speak different languages. For example, if 80% of the English content of the internet is complete rubbish, then it's not of any real benefit to the english-speaking population. All these statistics show is that a lot more gets uploaded to the internet by the english-speaking population than any other language. For example, below are a few statistics I found about what happens on the internet every 60 seconds.
- 27,800 Photo's will be uploaded to Instagram, resulting in 510,000 likes.
- There will be 278,000 tweets.
- There will be 1,875,000 likes on Facebook.
- 208,300 Photo's will be uploaded on Facebook.
- 200,000 People will be watching pornography (conservative estimate).
- 6 New articles will be published on Wikipedia.
- 204,000,000 E-mails will be sent, with 132,600,000 (65%) of them being spam.
- Amazon will sell $83,000 worth of stuff.
- 100 Hours worth of video content will be uploaded to YouTube.
- 2,800,000 Videos will be watched on YouTube.
These sorts of statistics show the fundamental uselessness of most of the content on the internet for anything other than entertainment or social networking. It is well known that a large part of the internet is pornography, so I found some statistics about internet porn as well.
- It is estimated the 4%, 1 in 25 of all websites on the internet are porn websites.
- Porn accounts for roughly 37% of all internet pages.
- 34% Of internet users have found porn on the internet by accident.
- 45% Of internet users admit to accessing internet porn monthly.
- Porn accounts for over a third of all internet downloads.
- Over 90% of porn sites are in the English language.
By my reckoning, if 90% of 37% is 33%, which means that a third of all the content of the internet in the English language is pornography, which drastically reduces the amount of useful material on the internet available to the english-speaking population straight away, without even taking into account things like Facebook and YouTube.
YouTube
YouTube is the worlds third most visited website, behind Google and Facebook. Despite the site only being 8 years old, (founded in May 2005), over 2 million videos a day are watched on YouTube. In November 2005, only 6 months after the launch, one of the founders claimed that more content was being uploaded every day than the contents of your average Blockbusters store, such was the popularity of the site. It was bought by Google in Autumn 2006 for $1.65 billion, a price justified by the advertising power that YouTube allows. Currently more content is uploaded every day than a years worth of content of all 3 of America's major TV channels combined. Today YouTube has over 1billion different viewers every month.
Most viral campaigns, adverts and videos in general go viral because of the massive userbase of YouTube. Videos such as the Fenton video which have no actual meaning other than entertainment have gone viral purely for their amusement factor. Their are however various "YouTubers" who run channels that create viral videos for a specific reason.
Dude Perfect
Dude Perfect is a YouTube channel, who, at the time of me posting this, are only 318 subscriptions away from have 2.25 million subscribers. The channel was founded by two mates having a bet that they could do a trick shot better than each other, with the winner earning a free sandwich. It shows that you don't necessarily need to mean for something to go viral in order for it to happen, if you create something that people want to see, people will see it. The idea behind the Dude Perfect videos isn't for them to be famous on the internet, but instead is to make innocent entertainment that seems to be lacking in modern western society. They work alongside charities such as Charity Water and Compassion International to promote charity, as well as doing some commercial work in order to earn a living.
Screen Junkies
In a world where information is being taken from the internet more and more as opposed to magazines and newspapers, writing articles becomes a less unique talent because the internet is a massive platform allowing more and more people to have an opinion, bias or not. Screen Junkies is a YouTube channel with just over 1.4million subscribers, it's the place to go to find out what film or TV show you should watch. It's less like a standard review site where you get a rating of a film and a final summative paragraph that either slates or hypes the movie to warp your mind, but more open ended and humorous, leaving you to make up your own mind. Whilst their videos might not be overly informative, they set the record straight about what the film actually is so you have a more realistic view as to what to expect. That's why so many people follow Screen Junkies.
Social Networking
It's alright having a video on YouTube for people to stumble across by accident, but social networking is the reason why things go viral. All it takes is for one person to find a video, then share that to their 300 friends. Then those 300 can potentially share that to their 300 friends and so on.
Oreo's 100th Birthday - Daily Twist Campaign
In 2012 Oreo ran the Daily Twist Campaign to celebrate their 100th birthday and make people more aware of global news or memorable dates. By doing this they showed that their 100 year old is still relevant to a modern day market. The idea was that for 100 days Oreo would release an image that celebrated something, some of which were determined before the end, whereas others were made based on the days news. Probably the most influential or controversial design was the gay pride Oreo, which promoted gay pride to it's 27 million fans on Facebook. Oreo now have 35 million fans on Facebook, showing the success of the campaign. In total, the campaign got over 430million views on Facebook as people shared it to each other. The most viewed post was in the one in honour of a new born panda, which, due to it's global engagement factor, ended up being seen by 4,409,344 people during the 100 day period.
Three Mobile Network - Dance Pony Dance
The idea behind the advertising campaign for Three was to spread the message that silly things in life matter, something that I think their market would like to hear due to the world becoming more and more serious. The advert went viral through twitter and the hashtag #danceponydance which was tweeted over 140,000 times in its first 5 days of being online despite being a UK based advert. The video has over 7.8 million views on YouTube and more than 13,000 shares on Facebook, proving that silly things do matter when it comes to viral advertising and campaigns. Similar to the videos produced by Dude Perfect, Three wanted to find something that would make people happy in order to get them to share the video, because generally, if something makes you happy, it'll make others happy as well.
Social Networking
It's alright having a video on YouTube for people to stumble across by accident, but social networking is the reason why things go viral. All it takes is for one person to find a video, then share that to their 300 friends. Then those 300 can potentially share that to their 300 friends and so on.
Oreo's 100th Birthday - Daily Twist Campaign
In 2012 Oreo ran the Daily Twist Campaign to celebrate their 100th birthday and make people more aware of global news or memorable dates. By doing this they showed that their 100 year old is still relevant to a modern day market. The idea was that for 100 days Oreo would release an image that celebrated something, some of which were determined before the end, whereas others were made based on the days news. Probably the most influential or controversial design was the gay pride Oreo, which promoted gay pride to it's 27 million fans on Facebook. Oreo now have 35 million fans on Facebook, showing the success of the campaign. In total, the campaign got over 430million views on Facebook as people shared it to each other. The most viewed post was in the one in honour of a new born panda, which, due to it's global engagement factor, ended up being seen by 4,409,344 people during the 100 day period.
Three Mobile Network - Dance Pony Dance
The idea behind the advertising campaign for Three was to spread the message that silly things in life matter, something that I think their market would like to hear due to the world becoming more and more serious. The advert went viral through twitter and the hashtag #danceponydance which was tweeted over 140,000 times in its first 5 days of being online despite being a UK based advert. The video has over 7.8 million views on YouTube and more than 13,000 shares on Facebook, proving that silly things do matter when it comes to viral advertising and campaigns. Similar to the videos produced by Dude Perfect, Three wanted to find something that would make people happy in order to get them to share the video, because generally, if something makes you happy, it'll make others happy as well.
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