YouTube Trends

Rise of the Ridiculous Prank Channel

By Emily Wood | April 01, 2013 | Categories: Comedy

Happy April Fools Day, everyone!

Pranking and prank videos have been a part of online video culture from the start. For YouTube, the popularity of some classic videos -- Rickroll anyone? -- was entirely based around prank behavior. Jimmy Kimmel helped bring crowd-sourced video pranking to the masses and fads like coning spread from one country to the next.

But over the past few years, we've also started to see another trend emerging: prank channels. Entire channels devoted to terrorizing and harassing innocent people. Here's a chart of the monthly viewcount for just the top 10 of these channels.

So what are the top 10? By our rough estimation, we'd designate these 10 channels -- whose videos have been watched around 3.5 billion times combined -- as the heaviest producers of consistent popular prank videos:

Want more? Check out this playlist for a selection of 10 of the top trending prank videos of all time. Watch them all below or click here to see the list.

Announcements

YouTube Searches Now on Google Trends

By Emily Wood | March 20, 2013 | Categories: Announcements , Search

Here's a trivia question: Based on YouTube searches, what was the top trending animal on YouTube this month in the United States? It's not what you might think...

Yes, goats. (If you missed this one and want to know more about how exactly screaming goats became so popular this month, here's one video that discusses the whole phenomenon.)

Google Trends enables you to take popular search queries and explore traffic patterns over time and geography. Now we've added YouTube search data going back to 2008, making it another great tool to look at video trends. Visit Google Trends and enter any search you'd like and then, on the left, choose "limit to" for YouTube. You can slice by region or category as well.

Search query interest can often provide a more detailed picture into the life of a trend or topic. For example: for those of you wondering whether the "Harlem Shake" is over... it's not.

You can also see interesting seasonal patterns. For example, cooking searches for "turkey" in the US see dramatic spikes every November as people scramble to remember exactly how to prep that big meal before the relatives arrive.

And Rebecca Black searches spike once each week. Guess which day...

Head over to Google Trends and see what other interesting YouTube searches you can find.

Viral

The Harlem Shake Has Exploded (Updated)

By Emily Wood | February 12, 2013 | Categories: Viral

Depending on your frame of reference, the "Harlem Shake" is best known as dance move from the 1980s, a dance track by Baauer, or the biggest web video trend of the month. If you need to get caught up to speed, here's a playlist of some of the most-popular iterations of it from the past few days.

The meme first started gaining traction last week and is attributed to a silly video from a vlogger named "Filthy Frank." Though it was another user named SunnyCoastSkate who then established the form we've become familiar with: the jump cut, the helmet, etc.

From there, the spin-offs spread very quickly. As of the 11th, around 12,000 "Harlem Shake" videos had been posted since the start of the month and they'd already been watched upwards of 44 million times. As you can see in the chart below, over 4,000 of these videos are being uploaded per day and that number is still likely on the rise.

One of the unique directions the trend took rather early was spawned by the staff of Maker Studios, who created what's currently the currently most-viewed version from their office. While it could have just remained a college-kid fad, Maker's version helped signal that the trend was something any organization or office could be a part of, with other companies joining them like...

College Humor	The Chive

Break	Buzzfeed

Musicians Matt and Kim produced a pretty epic one that's been circulated widely on social media. It's been performed by the young... and the old.

Some of the many subgroups we've seen are swim teams and U.S. service academies, and there are plenty more on the way, we're sure.

Update (2/15): It turns out plenty more were on the way. As of Valentine's day the number of "Harlem Shake" videos has increased to around 40,000 -- based on video title -- and those videos now have 175 million views. Here's an update to the above chart:

Year in Review

Best of 2012: Top Lists of Trending and Popular Videos

By Emily Wood | January 04, 2013 | Categories: Year in Review

As we officially start a new year of trending videos in 2013, let's take a look back at the most-popular and top trending videos across a wide variety of interesting YouTube video categories that helped make 2012 the year that it was!

(Click through to view playlists)


Top 10 Trending Science Videos of 2012	Top Trending Sports Videos of 2012	Top 10 How-to and DIY Videos of 2012

Top 10 Eye-Popping Videos of 2012	Top 10 Cover Videos of 2012	Top 10 Awe-Inspiring Videos of 2012

Top Trending Beauty Videos of 2012	Top Trending Comedy Videos of 2012	Top 10 Pet Videos of 2012

Top 10 Political Videos of 2012	Top 10 Gaming Culture Videos of 2012	Top 10 Holiday Videos of 2012