Recently a study was done on the science of retweets. It found that if a tweet isn't retweeted within about 15 minutes, its chances of being retweeted are almost nil.
Now this actually makes sense when you consider the vast amounts of tweets being posted by people every minute of every day and the fact that each individual user will only be able to view the tiniest fraction of the total tweets being posted to the database.
When something is retweeted, its probability of being seen essentially doubles. Now there are two separate conduits in which people may see the the tweet and decide to retweet it themselves, increasing the availability of the original tweet.
With every retweet, the probability of it being seen and tetweeted again rises exponentially.
The content of the tweet isn't a deciding factor, nor even the user who posted it. The true deciding factor is time. If a tweet isn't retweeted quickly, it generally tends to fall to the wayside, forgotten by time and the community at large.
Having more followers increases the chance of posts being shared, but the deciding factor is always on whether or not it was retweeted in a timely manner.
Good, So we're all on the same page now. The tweets that get shared the most are the tweets that were shared the most. Good. Wonderful. Fantastic. Moving on.
Another socially-based web service is Youtube, and it basically functions the same way. Only this time, with the augmentation of an algorithm.
"Suggested videos" are the Youtube equivalent to retweets. Most users tend to prefer clicking on one of those as opposed to searching for something on their own. Chances are high that the videos presented to you are related to whatever you just watched, or what you've already watched a lot of. Besides, come on, who's going to opt to type in a bunch of shit into a search bar when there's a video you'd watch right there, just a click away?
Most people tend to click on of the suggested videos, only searching for something if they're looking for something specific, or the suggested videos are all garbage.
Here is where things get fun. Back in the day, Youtube would suggest videos solely based on content and how often individual users watched both videos.
But of course, money always have a way of fucking up these nice services. Forever warping their innocent natures into greedy, bloodthirsty scams.
Once it became painfully obvious to companies that kids were choosing to binge Youtube videos instead of cable tv, and that channels had fanbases in the millions, they realized there was money to be made and they needed a piece of the action.
This was the point when new channels started popping up rapidly. Professional channels. Channels with obvious financial backing, an entire crew to work with, high production value, and sub-par content. Often it was content similar to what was already popular, but obviously made by a passionless team. They were attempting to rip-off pre-established content as a cash grab. Only, they aped the wrong parts of these shows.
They didn't know why people were interested in the original content. They made shows that were functionally similar and almost interesting. It was clear these creators didn't understand or care about the content they were pushing. Completely unlike the passion-driven channels that paved the way before them with their honest love for video games, horror, movies, or scientific speculation.
Well-made shows were popping up everyday rehashing topics already beaten to death... and they weren't getting the ratings they expected.
Since then, most of these shows hired people who actually did know and care what they were talking about, with mediocre results. The rest were pretty much relegated to click-bait list shows.
Like this one. Or this shit. Or this one that I don't really hate. I should. But honestly it's probably one of the best cash-grab channels to come out at this time. Or this rote garbage Or this complete waste of everything
I'm sure you clicked on at least one of them.
What did you notice?
Continued in Part 2
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