Steve Woolf (the sometimes BTS half of the Epic-FU neé Jetset team) wrote this smart and insightful post on their record breaking 3,000,000+ episode on the smashface productions blog:

A couple of weeks ago an EPIC-FU episode was featured on the home page of YouTube thanks to the generous selection of their editors. We expected to get a nice amount of views, but we never expected the episode to move past 3 million views when all was said and done. In fact, the episode is still compiling about 10-20,000 views per day as of the time of this writing.

We’re obviously very happy that the show is resonating with the largest community of web video aficionados on the Internet. It’s gives us a great sense of validation to know that we created a weekly show that can generate those kinds of numbers. Not easy to do these days.

What was especially interesting to us was to watch this video run away from all the other videos that were featured on YouTube at the same time as us. No other video crossed the million mark during the week we were featured. I spent quite a lot of time thinking about why that happened to try and understand the dynamics that affect viewership on popular video hosting sites.

For one thing, we’ve been producing regular content for a year and a half with JETSET and now EPIC-FU. So to some extent we can call the built-in audience a factor in the video’s explosive views. But we didn’t have a significantly greater number of YouTube subscribers than many other shows that have been featured and did not experience such a high number of views.

Another possible factor is that we always place a frame strategically in the exact middle of the upload so that when YouTube generates its preview thumbnail, prospective viewers are given a sense of the tone and personality of the show when reviewing the myriad choices for them to watch. However this image is quite small, and some videos that typically experience large view numbers have scantily clad women or mainstream celebrities as their preview image. Our preview image of this video is shown at left.

Then there’s the title of the video: taking no sh1t, internet love song, writer’s guild. A very typical title for us since we cover so much ground in each episode. It’s somewhat provocative, but is definitely less so than many other videos.

Finally we come to the content of the video. We touched on a number of politically charged stories that engendered a great deal of discussion in the comments under the video. In particular we said some things about the Writer’s Guild of America strike that is currently taking place. These statements seemed to provoke a really strong reaction from many viewers on both sides of the issue. Given the timing of the strike and the topical nature of the commentary in our video, this seems to be a strong factor in people watching the video and then passing it along to their friends to see, which is the really important factor in generating huge view numbers.

So without getting more scientific about it, it seems like we had a combination of factors that led to the breakout number of views. Good title, solid preview image, passionate existing fanbase, and provocative content. This is the kind of formula we strive to have in every show so that when the opportunity comes along to be promoted on a place like the YouTube home page, we are able to take maximum advantage of that exposure.

Are there any other major factors that I’ve missed? Why do you think this video has 4X the number of views of any other EPIC-FU video on YouTube?

Super Steve Woolf 

Early last summer, Steve and Zadi from Jetset showed us all at Next New Networks just how easy it was to use Ning to set up a specialized social network. My partner Tim Shey was the only one of us to take the bait and one night in August he delivered on a vision we’d been talking about at Channel Frederator and popped up Channel Frederator RAW, another one of our ‘firsts,’ this time the world’s first social network just for animation.

We quietly started mentioning RAW on our blogs, and eventually asked for a few members, to see whether the thing had any legs. At first I thought I’d send out a wider invitation after 100 members, but things being as busy as they were I never got around to it. Over this past weekend I’d friended my 200th RAW friend and realized it was now or never. So, the previews are over, we’re on Broadway.

At 3pm ET today I sent out a note to a select list of filmmakers, artists, and fans, people in our community we’d been in contact with for years. As of five minutes ago we’d increased the size of our network by almost 50% and the action on the site has perked up 10-fold. More art, more video, and most gratifying of all, more conversation is going on between animation people across five continents.

Thanks Steve, thanks Zadi, thanks Tim. Most of all, thanks to our new members (some cool icons they have above, yes?). I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves.

Had a great time this week with the inimitable Steve and Zadi from JETSET here at the Next New offices. Look for some of the fruits of our combined labors next week on a couple of shows — until then, please come back soon, S + Z!

Just had to post this because it’s so darn cool. Our friend Lan Bui of Noodlescar greatness made this killer video of photographs he took during this weekend’s Comic Con. Keep an eye out for NNN peeps like Zadi from JETSET and Casey and Justin from Pulp Secret, and frequent JETSET correspondent (and Noodlescar host) Bonny, Lan’s muse and partner in crime.

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p.s. Happy belated birthday, Lan! (You can see Bonny with cupcakes in the early photos.)

I completely dropped the ball on blogging about Pixelodeon after Fred tagged me to do it, but suffice it to say it was a great time and might just be looked back on as a watershed moment, when videobloggers, YouTubers, and some of the creative rebels in Hollywood all first started talking and realizing how much they have in common.

One thing I’m particularly happy about is that we played a small part in getting some folks we know at G4 excited about it, and they came down and covered the event. Here’s a piece they put up on (broadcast) TV that includes Next New Networks stars Zadi from JETSET and Casey and Rudy of Pulp Secret (and of course Galacticast) fame, as well as friends of ours new and old from the event.

I also really dug Micki Krimmel’s Pixelodeon video, shot on a little hand-held throughout the second day, which gives a better idea of the breadth of people and the feel of the event, and is a lot more intimate and personal than anything G4’s TV crew got. Sorry, my friends at G4, but a videoblogger had to win this one. It’s Pixelodeon! Plus, it has Fred.

Click To Play

And from our house, be sure to check out JETSET’s Pixelodeon recap, which has even more videobloggers and YouTube superstars.

Pixelodeon is an annual independent video festival created by our NNN JETSET colleagues Steve Woolf and Zadi Diaz. [note from tim: Pixelodeon was also created by the inimitable Irina Slutsky, dashing Jay Dedman and heroic Ryanne Hodson.] It’s running this June 9-10 at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. They’ve kindly asked me to keynote and for Eric Homan to have Channel Frederator curate the animation screening.

See you there.