Common Craft Blog
How "Twitter in Plain English" Gained 2.6 Million Views
By leelefever on February 19, 2009 - 12:13pm
A year ago today, I was writing the script for the video "Twitter in Plain English." A year later, the video has over 2.6 million views, thanks to a bit of collaboration between a handful of companies. Here's how:
We decided to make "Twitter in Plain English" for the same reason we made "RSS in Plain English " - it was a concept with huge potential that needed a better explanation. We wanted people to understand a resource that we value.
Twitter, Inc. didn't hire us to create the video and had no creative input on the project. However, I did share the video with Biz Stone and he saw opportunities. We made a simple deal where they could use it on their site and we retained all rights, etc.
Around April of 2008, this button appeared on Twitter.com, linking visitors to the video and our web site.
We loaded the video to a few hosts, like YouTube, Vimeo and dotSUB. Twitter chose to use the video player from dotSUB.com. If you're not aware of dotSUB, it's an amazing free service that enables any video to have subtitles in mutiple languages. Twitter embedded the dotSUB player and the ball began to roll.
Fast-forward to today and it's clear that the video has been a hit. Here's a graph of the daily views over the last year six months via dotSUB:
I think it's interesting to see the "hockey stick" formation over the last couple of months. My guess is that this is an indication of the growing number of people visiting Twitter.com. 2 million views on dotSUB are added to 600k on YouTube and 70k on Vimeo to get to 2.6 million overall views.
Michael Smolens, a friend and someone who founded dotSUB.com shared the stats this way, regarding the Twitter video on dotSUB:
The number of daily views is now at more than 30,000/day, up from 6,000/day 3 months ago. It is now in 53 languages, and is embedded on 3,397 different URLs.
Thanks to dotSUB's free, volunteer-based subtitling service, the video can be embedded and viewed with subtitles in 53 languages, making it accessible globally.
What I love about this story is that it's a win-win that's not predicated directly upon making money. We made the video on our own time. Twitter chose to use a free video service that opened the video to a global audience. Almost a year later, and Common Craft is getting a lot of referrals from Twitter.com and licensing deals, Twitter gets a video for explaining their service, dotSUB gets a perfect way to expose the value of their service and the people of the Web get a fun video that explains something that's difficult to understand. Win-win-win-win?
NOTE: In terms of our business model, Twitter is an exception, as we believe it is an exceptional product. At this stage in our evolution, I don't want to set the expectation that we will produce product-based videos on our own time.
Congrats!
Congrats!
Lee, that's awesome. I've
Lee, that's awesome. I've passed the video on your site around a lot when telling people about twitter. You did a great job explaining it. Thanks.
Great work
2.6 million visitors to a single video?
Easily one of the biggest viral marketing/social media success I have ever come across.
You are right in the win-win situation - because it helped improving brand reputation of 3c great sites at one go.
Congrats for that.
Besides, as always the video is very enjoyable.
Cheers :)
Thanks!
I love your work! That's a lot of people! And it show us what people need to see too: simple things! Congrats!
Sweet!
Whenever I want to explain what you and Sachi do to people, I say, like have you seen that video on the twitter site? And the people I'm talking to go, "Oh yeah! I know that." So it's definitely been very successful in getting your work out there (and I'm sure good for Twitter too).
That's great, Lee!
Congratulations!
Thank you!
That video is the reason I'm on twitter today.
Simply awesome!
What else can I say. Great work, great success story to learn from.
What could be next? Your work is worth mentioning alongside the 2009-02 McKinsey article Six ways to make Web 2.0 work .
Keep it up
Congrats Lee.
This video is the reason for me to join Twitter.
And the people I'm talking
And the people I'm talking to go, "Oh yeah! I know that." So it's definitely been very successful in getting your work out there (and I'm sure good for Twitter too).
muhabbet , mIRC
Congrats!
Gotta love the viral world.
Twitter in Plain English
Well Deserved - I have mentioned you in seminars and on my blog. You do a great job!
Congrats!
congratulations
2.6 million views? That's impressive.
Everyone I know is on twitter, except me. Maybe I need to get my head out the the sand. :)
Congratulations. ~ George
Sweet Deal
That was one of the sweetest deals you probably made. The publicity you gained from the exposure on tweeter.com can be measured in dollars. With that more and more people can see and contract the outstanding services that you provide: those fantastic videos in plain english. Well, keep the good work!
2,600,000 Views - Spare Time Used Wisely!
That is a great idea. Congratulation on the success. This is another proof example of how providing useful information can be greatly rewarded!
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Contacting twitter was an
Contacting twitter was an amazing idea! i've been using this video as an explanation for all of my friends. It's just easier for them to understand than my description, plus I save a lot of time not typing the same stuff over and over. Thanks a lot guys.
Instant Twitter Formula Payed Off For Me
Your video was the reaon that I ended up on Twitter at all, the difference it has made for me in my business in such a short time is amazing. Many thanks and keep up the great work.
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Great view of Twitter!
That is awesome! What a genius idea! I'm glad it worked out for you and we sure learned a lot about Twitter. I think it's time to jump in now!
Twitter Plain and Simple
I have only just started using Twitter so this plain and simple help how to use it correctly is very welcome indeed. I certainly will be passing the link around my friends for them to get the benefit of your knowledge.
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Twitter is an amazing
Twitter is an amazing service i'm just coming into contact with. I was amazed how easily the conecept of *status updates* has catapulted itself into popularity. There's a similar post here http://blog.ph-creative.com/post/Twitter-e28093-The-star-of-Micro-bloggi...
Wow... that was you... I
Wow... that was you... I mean i watched the video before and i thought it was very well made. I do use Twitter a lot lately and i love it! Your twitter video project certainly took off hugely and it made me realized the power of online videos again.
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Well this can be used as inspiration
Using Twitter to promote a business can be an interesting idea/opportunity. And your video pushed it even further...
Ciao
Ugo
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Congratulations!
WOW...You really did a great job by getting in contact with Twitter. Now, enjoy your publicity! Keep up the great work!
Sincerely,
Gellert
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