What made Rebecca Black’s Friday music video a hit?

More than 90% of people uploading videos on youtube want them to go viral, so how did Rebecca Black do it with the Friday Song?

The Friday song had lots of mainstream ‘pop culture’ elements that fitted a demographic of youtube viewers, but it didn’t have VEVO or MTV behind it. Rebecca Black was an unknown artist without an international PR campaign supporting her, but the Friday Song went viral.

Was it because it got picked up by news agencies that word started to spread, or did the video go viral solely because of youtube search and sharing? Without being able to look at the statistics behind the video, its hard to say what specific event took place to make it sky rocket, but here are some noticeable elements that surely helped

1. It was slated as ‘the most terrible song’ in the world. This headline, in several forms got people sharing the video, and most likely commenting on how bad it was.
2. The video itself was slammed as cheesy and so low budget that it ‘hurt the viewers eyes’ in some cases.
3. The Friday Song itself would stick in your head, and go on ‘replay’ so that in itself reminded the listener of the song once again.
4. When news agencies started to pick it up, the video just exploded. Everyone had to talk about it because it was a trending ‘controversial video’
5. It touches on the idea of internet fame and young viewers wanted to see how she did it in her video, to copy or adapt it to their own channel
6. It was fun to comment on. Everyone had an opinion, and soon fans and haters made spoofs and remixes.

All these factors contributed to it going viral, but the song itself, more than the quality of the video, was what made it so much more shareable. What does this mean for video creators who want to go viral? Make unique content that is debatable, controversial and that you would want to share with someone else.

Rebecca Black Friday Song