YouTube stats

A year ago, my 3 top-visited youtube videos were:

1. HK Dragon Boat Festival - Dragon Dance (in Queens) [652 visitors, two of whom made snide remarks about the dance];
   
2. Gorilla Dad & Kid Play Tag (at the Dublin Zoo) [572 visitors]; and
   
3. Orangutan Attempts Death-Defying Feat (at the Dublin Zoo -- it's actually something quite simple, but the orangutan acts as if it is something very dangerous) [444 visitors].

Now, my 3 top-visited videos are:

1. Black Snakes Mating (in western Pennsylvania) [5,630 voyeurs];
   
2. Gorilla Dad & Kid Play Tag (at the Dublin Zoo) [2,614 visitors]; and
   
3. Monkeys - Troupe of Acrobats (at the Dublin Zoo) [2,379 visitors].

The orangutan video has fallen to 4th place, and the dragon dance has fallen to 7th (behind a video of multiple layered images from the D train crossing the East River at night and a video of a monkey playing with a rope).

The stats on the snakes video are even more impressive when you consider that the Dublin Zoo videos have been up 10 months longer than the snakes. In fact, I've had more hits on the snakes video than I've had hits on my blog... even though I posted the video on my blog as well!

What seems to attract visitors most is an intriguing name, rather than the rating of the video. It's all about marketing. My own favorites are not even in the top 10 (out of the 50+ I've uploaded so far).