Explaining the Persistence Paradox
Kevin Kelly recently drew attention to a paper by Fang Wu and Bernardo Huberman of HP Labs (PDF) analysing the popularity of almost 10 million YouTube videos. The paper takes the somewhat narrow view that all videos submitted to YouTube are attempts to achieve mass attention – to have the YouTube equivalent of a blockbuster. Within this framework, the researchers observed an interesting result which they termed the ‘Persistence Paradox’.
In essence, the Persistence Paradox is the apparent contradiction between two objective results obtained from their analysis:
The more frequently an individual uploads content, the less likely they are to have a ‘hit’ (where a hit sits in the top 1% of videos by viewership).
The more frequently an individual uploads content, the better they get (using video ratings to measure quality).
The only explanation offered is a kind of Diminishing Returns theory: “when a producer submits several videos over time, their novelty and hence their appeal to a wide audience tends to decrease.” One example of this might be Ray-Ban’s Never Hide Films, which has yet to achieve the same amount of attention earned by the original “Guy catches glasses with face” video. But as noted in the paper, this theory alone does not intuitively seem to adequately explain the apparent paradox.
Being fairly familiar with the YouTube ecosystem, several alternative explanations come to mind.
1) That difficult second album
Just like a musician, the first work someone produces in a particular channel is likely to have been gestating for a much longer period than those that follow. This goes hand-in-hand with the paper’s Diminishing Returns idea. An example would be the channel of Those Lil Rabbits, who despite producing many creative and moderately popular videos have yet to match the original towering success of their first David Blaine parody, shown above.
2) The harder the battle, the more glorious the victory
Someone that produces videos relatively infrequently (such as the Simon’s Cat animations) is likely to be putting in more effort and so produce better quality videos than someone that uploads more frequently. (If a smart match can be found this can be an efficient way for a brand to get involved – see the most recent Simon’s Cat video for the RSPCA). There is also a scarcity factor – something produced regularly is likely to have less apeal than something rarer.
3) Speak up if you have something to say
There are many motivations to join YouTube and submit a video, but people are more likely to take that step if they think they happen to have captured something really worth sharing with the world. It could be because they just happened to capture something particularly impressive (such as this ‘Crazy trampoline stunt‘), or they have one particular party piece they want to share (such as this dog trick). Another possibility in this vein is of course that of an expensive piece of branded video being launched on YouTube along with its own channel, such as the recent LED sheep video put together for Samsung.
With these ideas in mind, the Persistence Paradox does not seem so surprising. The next question we have to ask is: so what? What does this tell us if our intent is to produce a hit?
Apart from unpredictable, Black Swan Theory-type successes, the conclusions are pretty clear and reassuringly intuitive: work long and hard on your content, and if that doesn’t work, try doing something completely different. And don’t forget that gaining the loyalty of a smaller group through relevant and regular content can often be more useful than having a single huge one-off hit.
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