This past week a very cute and touching video went “viral“. You might have seen it Tuesday night on ESPN Sports Center as one of the “Top 10 Plays of the Day”, or the next morning on regular TV as all the channels starting picking it up. If you didn’t see it, here’s aYahoo story that includes the video. In essence, a family was at a Phillies game on Tuesday night, and dad made a nice play on a foul ball. He high-fived his 3 year old daughter, Emily, and then handed her the prize ball. She proceed to immediately throw the ball over the edge of the upper deck they were sitting in. Surprised dad threw up is arms with a questioning smile, and then gave the girl a big hug while saying “it’s OK, it’s OK”.
Of course, the television cameras covering the game caught the entire thing, ESPN picked it up for the nightly Sports Center, and like a flash, the video clip went viral.
“Going viral“, by the way, is another one of those new phrases being generated by the Internet. In this case, it means that an online video clip is quickly being passed along the Web by word of mouth, and within a matter of hours has been viewed by millions of people (kind of like a real virus duplicates and spreads).
The story and video were a refreshing change from the rest of the news that is currently dominating the airwaves, which is probably one reason that it probably went viral. But it also demonstrates the bigger concept of how popular and widespread online video has become. If you question this, check out some July 2009 statistics from ComScore, an online statistical service that specializes in digital content:
Notice that Total viewed on the Internet in July is in BILLIONS…. over 21 billion to be sure. Along with these numbers, over 158 million of us viewed online videos in July, with YouTube (owned by Google) having the most viewers at about 120 million.
So what does all this mean? Well, it depends upon how you look at it. For some, it means the Internet is being flooded by mindless video that does nothing more than overwhelm us lots of flashy garbage, just as television (some would say) now does. That’s the ‘dark’ way to view it.
On the other hand (and this is how we feel), it means that we now have millions of informative and entertaining video clips at our fingertips, and at any time of day, if we want to be entertained, get some news, or need to learn something… it’s out there, as a video.
Of course my personal favorite type of online videos are “How-To” videos, of which we are seeing more of every day.
Just to give you a sample, here are a few popular online video sites that have quite a bit of How-To content.
- www.youtube.com (type in what you are looking for, followed by the word “tutorial”)
- www.monkeysee.com
- www. howcast.com
- www.ehow.com
And there are many more.
The bottom-line is, media is overtaking the Internet, and although there is lots of “junk” out there, there’s also a lot of good quality entertainment and help you can find if you do a bit of digging. And of course, in the very near future, the Senior Health Foundation will be contributing to that wealth of online “how-to” videos by publishing a good number of our video tutorials, free to anyone who needs them. We’ll keep you posted…
Sign up for the FREE SHF eNewsletter! it will keep you informed about our classes, and provide you with our favorite computer tips, tricks, and news. PLUS we promise to NEVER share your information with any other organization, and you can unsubscribe at any time.