Over at TechCrunch, a guest post written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg is stirring up some animosity over YouTube spamming. Greenberg wrote a story called “The Secret Strategies Behind Many ‘Viral’ Videos”, where he talks about how his viral video marketing company, The Comotion Group, helps makes YouTube videos viral.

Greenberg starts out the piece:

Have you ever watched a video with 100,000 views on YouTube and thought to yourself: “How the hell did that video get so many views?” Chances are pretty good that this didn’t happen naturally, but rather that some company worked hard to make it happen – some company like mine.

And then he details some secrets like:

1. Not all viral videos are what they seem
2. Content is NOT King
3. Core Strategy: Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page
4. Title Optimization
5. Thumbnail Optimization
6. Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself
7. Releasing all videos simultaneously
8. Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole
9. Metrics/Tracking: How we measure effectiveness

Commenters were hating on this post saying how this is just spamming. Even Michael Arrington said he was “disgusted” by this post.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, TechCrunch, viral videos,

Bonus: Read the follow-up article by Greenberg where he says that some of the original flavor of the post was lost due to TechCrunch’s editing of the story.

Popularity: 34% [?]

According to Infonetics Research, worldwide sales of video-enabled cell phones will double by 2010 with video subscribers  growing to 58.6 million. Sales will also grow to about $125 billion by 2010 from nearly $58 billion last year.

North America is lagging other worldwide regions. However, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are leading regions for mobile video service revenue last year with 42% of the worldwide total.

Technorati Tags: mobile, cell, video phone, mobile TV, mobile video

Popularity: 33% [?]

Almost half of all adults play video games, according to results from an AOL Games/The Associated Press poll.

Playing with Family. 43% of parents said they never play with their kids. Younger parents were found to be more likely to play games with their kids than older parents.
Holiday Season: 18% said they were very or somewhat likely to purchase a video game console during the upcoming holiday season. 35% said they were very or somewhat likely to purchase video games. 51% of those planning to buy a console said that price was the most important factor followed by recommendations from friends and family (34%).

Demographics: More than half of all adult gamers are under 40 years old, while 27% are under the age of 30. Only a third of all adult gamers are married and have children.

Time Spent Playing VGs. The typical adult gamer spends 2 hours each week playing video games. This number increases to 4 hours per week for fans of shooter games, and 5 hours for fans of adventure and role playing games.

Where They Play. 93% stated they usually play online games at home, while 5% admitted to playing at work or school.

Hardcore Gamers. 41% of all gamers are “hardcore gamers,” spending at least 3 hours per week playing video games. Hardcore gamers are younger than other gamers with 59% under the age of 40 and 32% under 30. 58% of hardcore gamers are male, while 42% are female.

Light Gamers. Light gamers (31%) play less than an hour per week on average. Light gamers are more likely to be female, in their 40’s and employed full-time. A majority (68%) of light gamers are married versus 50% of hardcore gamers.
Other tidbits:

• 80% of children (4 to 17)  regularly play computer games.
• 81% of all children play at least occasionally
• 38% of all adults admit to playing video games.
• 45% are actually female.

[From PC World.]

Popularity: 13% [?]