HotForWords
Key Master
As of today, YouTube changed the default Video page to something called "Most Popular" which uses a "secret algorithm" to determine what videos appear. Even though I have been one of the MOST watched channels of all time on YouTube, I don't appear on those pages.
It will probably result in my videos never being seen by new people anymore.
So, what do you all think about this new change?
Greatest Potential
Member
Marina, you're better than that! Keep doing your thing because you'll always be successful. You have lots of support=)
Education will always be in demand for it is a time tested proving ground which sets standards for what the future will be like.
Plus, HotForWords is fun, and fun is where's it's at!
I thinketh you are more popular than you may realise, however, I could be way off the mark here since you are intelligent and capable of figuring these things out by yourself if need be.
New change? Nah, changes may occur and people tend to find ways of justifying their jobs by claiming to create change but it isn't called change for nothing. Change is change because it changes every so often, right? The internet is a busy place.
HotForWords fan base is in the millions which is phenomenal. Focus on those algorithm stats that make a difference for you and you will have your answer.
stebakle
Member
Have you attempted to contact anyone at YT to see why their "Secret Most Popular Algorithm" doesn't include one of their most popular and visited channels? Sounds pretty smelly [??] to me. Seriously, do you want me to go over there and beat these guys up? 
bsomebody
Member
I see a few different things that we, as a class, can do.
1) PK is already on this, but we can look at the most popular vids, and try to see what they have in common. I am not sure if we can access all the relevant info, but from what Lady M and some of the others have said, quite a few of us know some of the factors that may fit into this secret formula. Share these here, and, eventually we can break the code.
2) We can also think of alternative methods to get the vids out there. Lady M has a few friends out there. Phil and a few others have traded cameos. Some of the lads may know of some ideas to get Lady M's face out there.
3) Simple, but always effective, is 'word of mouth.' Pass these vids to your pals' e-mails, attach a link in your web page, have a HFW lesson on your YT page, facebook, or MySpace, etc.
4) Most importantly, Keep the Faith. I believe Lady M has a valuable product, and I think it is worth getting it out there. I also know that the site and vids are important to Lady M as a person. I do not really know her, but we have all traded thoughts back and forth enough to gain some sense of each other. This site makes my friend happy; it is important to her, so it is important to me.
Keep the good ju-ju flowing, my friends. 
originalistrick
Member
Marina,
You said earlier that YT would not have any contact with you about this. Maybe I'm more agressive than you, but I swear, it seems like there would have to be someone there you could lean on for some answers to this situation.
If you haven't already, can you get in touch with some of your friends/acquaintances who also have YT sites and see what they're thinking and doing about this? Surely some of them have the same concerns as you about this change.
In his remarks above bsomebody put it well. While I cannot envision a scenario in which I will ever have the honor of meeting our Dear Teach in person, I, too, feel like I know her just a little, and that she is a quality person who I would be proud to call my friend. Marina is trying to do something special with her life through Hot For Words, and as bsomebody said, that makes it important to me, as well.
Marina, when you discover something we can do to help, and you will, let us know right away, o.k.?
Always.
Me Lika Do The Cha Cha
Member
It could backfire when Wired announces the Sexiest Geek for 2008 
seesixcm6
Member
If the "secret algorithm" won't be revealed, just keep doing as you are doing now. We will continue to view, rate and comment on your videos. Also, check to see what works best. If you get more viewers with your "Guess the Word games", then emphasize those. Or, if you get more viewers with videos from the beaches of Hawaii, or from places in Las Vegas, then make videos from remote locations more often. (There are many nice locations in Beverly Hills.)
The videos I remember best are the "abyss" video in which you wore red short-shorts and a white top, your "clown" video in which you screamed and hid under your bedcovers, and your "piggyback" video, in which you'd pay me a couple of dollars to carry you. 
pedanticKarl
Member
I'm sure the new changes will affect Marina's visibility and the ability to be discovered by new YT visitors as Marina has already mentioned that most people will not click on the Most Viewed category. The question is by how much and how quickly the new YT changes will affect Marina's honors.
Marina, as you monitor your YT Insight statistics and other stats, maybe you can write a blog page in about four weeks and let us know how much the new defaulted Popular page has affected you. Since I am monitoring various stats I should be able to quantify by how much the new YT change affect you.
I believe that a lot of people discover you through the YT "Related Videos" section. If that is the case, then the new YT change may not have such as drastic affect as you might envision. Time will tell.
As some of you know, I am doing a ton of statistical research into the YT honors such as Most Viewed and Popular pages and what it all means. At this time, there is sufficient information regarding the Popular pages that knowing the secret algorithm is of no importance. Even if we all knew what the formula was, there is nothing one can do to affect the results, other than the things @bsomebody mentioned above.
What we can do is know the key elements in how Popularity is measured and taken action on that front. Some of the tings that I am aware of is that we all want to do the following:
1. Watch the video in its entirety. Watching half of it won't register as a measure of popularity.
2. Rate Marina's videos whenever you can.
3. Comment on Marina's videos whenever you can.
4. If you are not a subscriber, subscribe to the YT Hotforwords channel.
If you haven't read this LA Times blog about the new change, it is very interesting and has some very interesting comments.
On YouTube, ‘popular’ no longer means the thing everyone’s watching [UPDATED]
7:18 PM, February 4, 2009 - [Updated Feb 5]
Che Rambler
Member
I know I just click on what is in front of me, there is so much information to take in on so many sites I just take the path of least residence.
pedanticKarl
Member
Hello Marina & everyone else;
It is true as Che Volay says, most of us take the path of least resistance and click what's in front of us.
Just want to make an announcement that the HFW Pot "video" is doing great in terms of Honors. That video just popped back on to the POPULAR page #5 and is in #96 position with 120,577 views.
The Pot video would now not be on the Most Viewed pages because the shelf life of a video on the Most Viewed pages is 2 days and this video was published 3 days ago.
However, by my observations at this moment, a video on the Popular pages can have 7 days of shelf life. Which means that in the next 4 days, if that Pot video continues to find viewers, it will stay on the Popular pages. However, it may disappear now and then, but as long as it finds viewers, it will re-appear.
Marina, my early analysis (not confirmed yet) is as follows:
The Pot video was on the Popular page this morning at 7:30 AM at position #93.
Then, it disappeared and it is back again on the Popular page as #96.
My conclusion is that the appearance of the video on the Popular pages seems to coincide with Internet / YT traffic as a whole. Those hours 7:30 AM and 9:30 PM seem to see more traffic and hence your views accelerated causing the video to pop back on again. This is not confirmed yet and I have much much work ahead of me.
Smoking pot with Michael Phelps?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppptolZvjSQ
Footnote:
YouTube has to be on drugs. WTF is it with the last POPULAR page#5. Very often, that page is not completely occupied. All Honors pages normally have 20 videos on them, yet this last Popular page#5 has 13 videos on it right now. You mean that YT couldn't find 7 more videos to fill out the 20 videos? Something is whacked with them, besides a few other whacked things that I am looking at.
Greatest Potential
Member
~Hi~
The path of least resistance can be applied to the willingness people will go to check out these video selections on that list because I doubt the majority of people who look through those will go past page four or five, and if your video is #96 it may be yet another reason why it's not getting looked at as often as other daily pick videos on that list.
Karl, that's an interesting point you mention about the shelf life of these so-called popular videos being only 2-7 days at most. We're talking about a list that basically caters to a quick fix generation impulse type of crowd, an algorithm which goes under the title "secret algorithm" Ooh, how mysterious! So secret, yet so popular that it makes no secret about it 
No, it's no secret. It's tabloid marketing approach. Think about standing in line at the grocery store waiting for the cashier to ring your items up and being tempted, or as some would like to say "swept away" to impulse shop.
pedanticKarl
Member
CORRECTION: Regarding shelf life on Popular pages
I just looked at my table of how long a video stays on the Popular pages and I just saw an additional entry of "3 Weeks Ago".
Here is a quick summary table of how many videos stayed how long:
(Less than 1 week of collected data)
1 Week Ago: 271 videos
2 Weeks Ago: 39 videos
3 Weeks Ago: 19 videos
Che Rambler
Member
Marina, you're being a 'drama queen' again
Bob
Member
Has anyone considered that the criterion for appearing on the 'Most Popular' list may be the number of click-throughs they get for the ads associated with the video.
It would make sense, because Youtube are clearly interested in maximizing their revenue from their advertisers. 
pedanticKarl
Member
Hello Bob,
Yes, Ad click-through has been discussed by other bloggers and it has been considered. At this moment though, I don't think it is being implemented. In fact, "Ads" is one of the sore subjects that YouTube is being criticized about for not doing enough.
When you enter the main pages of YouTube, there are Ads, but not all videos on the "Popular" pages have Ads. There is a 25 second video on the Popular pages entitled, "Dramatic Cupcake Dog - Revelation" which has no Ads.
I believe it is only the partner videos that have Ads at the moment, and videos that are being subjected to CopyRight© issues. That is, when a user is in violation of some copyright infringements, YT may leave the video up, but add Ads next to the video. The user can either accept that, or remove the video.
pedanticKarl
Member
Marina,
Here is a graph of the "Pot" video; "Smoking pot with Michael Phelps?"
Caveat:
I am still doing a lot of this manually, so there are not as many details for now.
Currently, while developing my tools, I am just looking at views, but I will be looking at comments, ratings and other metrics soon.
I don't know the answers to "Why" questions, yet. This is still early in the game for me, so I only know some of the "What" questions.
Comments about the Graph:
Right now it is: Feb 7, 2009 6:50 AM
- The "Pot" video first appeared on the Popular pages on Feb 5, 4:21 AM PST
- Since Feb 5, I have taken 40 data snapshots of the Popular pages.
- The "Pot" video has only appeared 19 times on the Popular pages for short periods of time.
- Even though that video is not on the Most Viewed pages any longer, it is still picking up views and it appears to be progressing up in position.
- Notice the large jumps in position, 100 to 92 and 97 to 89.
Why? I don't know, yet. I can only speculate at the moment.
One thing I noticed is that when other videos leave the board either due to having gone beyond their shelf life or they fail to meet the secret criteria, then some videos are bumped up. This tells me that probably one of the metrics is relative performance to other videos.
The other reason for the jump in position may be early morning hours and that there were more comments being created. Many commenters may not view the video again which would mean no increase in video views while comments are increasing. Yet to be confirmed.
The jump on Feb 6 occurred at 1:04 AM PST, which is 8-10 AM across Europe whose viewing activity caused the jump?
At the moment, the age of the video is, "3 Days Ago".
Since I have seen videos on the Popular pages as long as "3 Weeks Ago", it is expected to see this video progress towards page 1 on the Popular pages in the next two weeks.
pedanticKarl
Member
Question to self:
Have I just uncovered someone trying to game the Popular pages?
Each of the videos below is on the Popular pages.
Each of those videos are not Favorites (i.e. shortcuts), but actually uploaded videos.
Are those users the same user? Either they are, or others are stealing the video to get their channels recognized by playing off of a leading video on the Popular pages.
2/7/2009 6:32 PST
YT User: Position Video Title
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETHLSS p1 v17 David After Dentist Visit
imockery p2 v6 David After Dentist - A Metal Tribute
booba1234 p4 v5 David After Dentist
gcsjulian p5 v6 David After Dentist
kaoD p3 v9 David despues del Dentista (David after Dentist)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Che Rambler
Member
PK, Excellent graphs Your so good at visual aids.
James
Member
I will have a look at this now..
James
Member
When I click the videos tab (which I never click anyway) it automatically goes on to most viewed...
Che Rambler
Member
It is hard to find one of your video this way, kinda sucks since this will interfere with your income.
bsomebody
Member
Does it make a difference if I watch the vid @ HFW or YT? Should I comment on YT? Rate the vid on YT? I usually do not visit Lady M's YT channel, just the HFW site. Could this be detrimental?
pedanticKarl
Member
@bsomebody
Back in Oct '08, Marina wrote a detailed article that can be found at Blog link at the top of the page. Also see the link reference below.
To answer your question.
"Does it make a difference if I watch the vid @ HFW or YT?"
Views are still counted and contribute to the overall count when you view a video at HFW, but those views do not contribute to Honors (YT Most Viewed, Popular, etc).
At that time, Marina said that the HFW community did not need to go to YT and watch the video there. The question is, how important is it today that we go to YT and comment and rate? I presume Marina will provide the answer once she gets more information about how much the Popular category may be affecting her.
Here is the Blog article that Marina wrote on Oct 15, 2008.
Statistics on YouTube, View Counts and Honors
Greatest Potential
Member
hey pussycats
Just clicking on videos doesn't do it. When you hotforwordians decide to get more pro-active and come up with a plan get back to me because I'm busy promoting.
originalistrick
Member
Howdy, folks.
I read Marina's comments back in October to which bsomebody is referring, and I continued to watch her lessons first on YT, and then go into HFW, just to make certain she was receiving any and all possible "credit" for views. Heck, I knew I would want to see them more than once anyway. It surely seems that now we all need to be religiously viewing Marina's lessons on YT, and in their entirety, each and every time.
leonard
Member
Thanks for keeping us informed. Secrets will hide the truth and thats what "You Tube" has got to do against the networks. CBS,NBC, and ABC is starting to loose big time!!!...***Algorithm*** an a count of cash flow,lol...net of life...Think of the central government; how we won't be able to use old tv's without the "converter box"...secrets?
HotForWords
Key Master
If you are outside of the United States, the video tab still defaults to Most Viewed, which means the changeover is not complete yet.
James
Member
YT should have never been bought by Google. All this secret stuff means underhand business is happening.
Warren
Member
I don't understand what all of this means.
I get: "Featured Video”; “Most Viewed”; "Popular”; and then I have my choice of the details.
When I sign out I get: “Videos being watched right now…”; “Promoted Videos”;
“Featured Videos”.
With choices of: “Most Viewed”; “Most Discussed”; “Top Favorited”.
And right now Marinas “Grammy” show is on page 3 of “Most Viewed”.
Soo.. What is the problem? It looks the same to me.
Marina, you're the "Queen of YouTube" so I wouldn't worry.
pedanticKarl
Member
At this moment, the HotForWords "GTW Game 4 Reproductive Purposes" video has been on the Popular pages at position #100 (pg5) since 1:01 PM PST. It is now 2:54 PM PST
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