Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Why The Rick Astley YouTube Rickroll Matters

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Christopher S Penn
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It’s all good fun today on April Fool’s Day as Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up is linked from all of YouTube’s featured videos. Just fun, right?

Heck no. There’s a lot more to this.

We’ve heard a lot of metrics about YouTube and other social sites, about how many users there are. But what would happen if one video were promoted by YouTube to the near exclusion of everything else?

That’s today’s Rickroll. It’s not just an April Fool’s Day prank – it’s also a clear demonstration of how many users YouTube could aggregate to a single video if they so chose, and you can bet big media and marketers will be paying very close attention, particularly if the number of views heads into the tens of millions in just 24 hours.

Here’s an interesting tidbit: the Rick Astley video has embedding disabled. Why? It can’t be just a licensing thing. What if YouTube wanted an accurate measurement of plays just on YouTube.com? You’d have to disable embedding.

What, do you think this link is going to go anywhere else besides that video?

Comments

17 responses to “Why The Rick Astley YouTube Rickroll Matters”

  1. Rick Astley Avatar
    Rick Astley

    You wouldn’t get this (kind of post) from any other guy. I just want to tell you how I’m feeling. I’ve got to make you understand…

    …that Rick Rolling really is a social phenomenon, and YouTube pulling this sort of stunt overall helps them. For the people who get it, they’re thrilled! For the people who don’t get it, what’s going to happen? They’re not going to use YouTube anymore? Unlikely.

    Although marketers will look to these numbers and salivate, they’re just going to have to try to keep going viral.

    Reply
  2. Rick Astley Avatar
    Rick Astley

    You wouldn’t get this (kind of post) from any other guy. I just want to tell you how I’m feeling. I’ve got to make you understand…

    …that Rick Rolling really is a social phenomenon, and YouTube pulling this sort of stunt overall helps them. For the people who get it, they’re thrilled! For the people who don’t get it, what’s going to happen? They’re not going to use YouTube anymore? Unlikely.

    Although marketers will look to these numbers and salivate, they’re just going to have to try to keep going viral.

    Reply
  3. Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast » April Fools Day YouTube RickRoll and Angry Commenters

    […] Penn on 01 Apr 2008 at 09:53 am | Tagged as: Uncategorized I had a short post musing about YouTube rickrolling for April Fool’s Day on my blog, and got an angry anonymous comment (which was later swept out of the living room) about how […]

    Reply
  4. Christopher S. Penn Avatar
    Christopher S. Penn

    FYI, there was a really anonymous comment here earlier that was deleted.

    Reply
  5. Christopher S. Penn Avatar
    Christopher S. Penn

    FYI, there was a really anonymous comment here earlier that was deleted.

    Reply
  6. AdPuppet Avatar
    AdPuppet

    Very nice insight there…

    Big media is probably interested in the views only, but the other metrics are pretty darn interesting too. As of this comment, there have been 3.7 million views / 12,899 ratings / 28,874 comments / favorited 4,973 times.

    I wonder if anyone has tracked the stats on an hourly basis. Now that would be VERY enlightening…

    Reply
  7. AdPuppet Avatar
    AdPuppet

    Very nice insight there…

    Big media is probably interested in the views only, but the other metrics are pretty darn interesting too. As of this comment, there have been 3.7 million views / 12,899 ratings / 28,874 comments / favorited 4,973 times.

    I wonder if anyone has tracked the stats on an hourly basis. Now that would be VERY enlightening…

    Reply
  8. Tim Street Avatar
    Tim Street

    You are on to something there but also think about the flip side of it. Imagine if you were one of the featured videos and you had a viral campaign planned for today? Ouch!

    Reply
  9. Tim Street Avatar
    Tim Street

    You are on to something there but also think about the flip side of it. Imagine if you were one of the featured videos and you had a viral campaign planned for today? Ouch!

    Reply
  10. Speedy Avatar
    Speedy

    Well apparently, Rick Astley isn’t the only former singer celeb being rolled. MC Hammer has now fallen victim to the craze, as people are now getting “HammerRolled”.

    A website located at http://HammerRolled.com explains this version of the good ‘ole Rick Roll.

    Reply
  11. Speedy Avatar
    Speedy

    Well apparently, Rick Astley isn’t the only former singer celeb being rolled. MC Hammer has now fallen victim to the craze, as people are now getting “HammerRolled”.

    A website located at http://HammerRolled.com explains this version of the good ‘ole Rick Roll.

    Reply
  12. Dan Klass Avatar
    Dan Klass

    “MC Hammer has now fallen victim to the craze?” Victim? A 20+ year old song/video just got watched by 6 million people. I think careers that have been largely dead for two decades could easily be resurrected as a result.

    Seriously, look for the Astley (and then Hammer) song to suddenly start appearing in commercials. He is set to tour in a nostalgia-fest with ABC and other 80’s acts. I think ticket sales just went way up.

    Reply
  13. Dan Klass Avatar
    Dan Klass

    “MC Hammer has now fallen victim to the craze?” Victim? A 20+ year old song/video just got watched by 6 million people. I think careers that have been largely dead for two decades could easily be resurrected as a result.

    Seriously, look for the Astley (and then Hammer) song to suddenly start appearing in commercials. He is set to tour in a nostalgia-fest with ABC and other 80’s acts. I think ticket sales just went way up.

    Reply
  14. Sara Avatar
    Sara

    Chris – Just found your blog and I’m loving it. I think you are right on the money with the Rickrolling. With a huge space like YouTube it’s no surprise that big-time advertisers would be wanting a piece of screentime.

    According to a Harris Interactive poll done a little over a year ago, most YouTube viewers say they would spend less time on the site if videos included advertisements. However, if the big guys used things like music videos and television shows they would get the same (or better) effect without the overt sales push.

    On top of that, our generation (I’m 29) is so nostalgic about the popular culture of our youth and teen years. It would be really easy to tap into that further than is already being done.

    Dan – it’s interesting that Astley is set to tour soon. Perhaps ABC is a few steps ahead of us. Maybe the whole thing was a publicity stunt disguised as an April Fools joke.

    Sara

    Reply
  15. Sara Avatar
    Sara

    Chris – Just found your blog and I’m loving it. I think you are right on the money with the Rickrolling. With a huge space like YouTube it’s no surprise that big-time advertisers would be wanting a piece of screentime.

    According to a Harris Interactive poll done a little over a year ago, most YouTube viewers say they would spend less time on the site if videos included advertisements. However, if the big guys used things like music videos and television shows they would get the same (or better) effect without the overt sales push.

    On top of that, our generation (I’m 29) is so nostalgic about the popular culture of our youth and teen years. It would be really easy to tap into that further than is already being done.

    Dan – it’s interesting that Astley is set to tour soon. Perhaps ABC is a few steps ahead of us. Maybe the whole thing was a publicity stunt disguised as an April Fools joke.

    Sara

    Reply
  16. FreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » Why we all love watching videos online (especially at work)

    […] Why The Rick Astley YouTube Rickroll Matters […]

    Reply
  17. Rick Astley Avatar
    Rick Astley

    never gonna give you up, never gonna say good bye

    Reply

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