There’s a great piece over at ClickZ by ShiShir Mehrotra, the Director of Product Management at Google.  It’s called 4 Ways Video Is Fundamentally Changing, and it’s a fantastic breakdown of the major evolutions we’re currently seeing with the online video format.  One of his main points is that the infinite shelf-life of online video paves the way for fragmentation—more niches, more channels, more content—it all leads to a more engaged viewer.

Because video lives online forever, it can be found by its most-perfect audience at any time.  Which is just a fancy way of saying that a viral hit doesn’t always see success right away.

Take this video for example, which was uploaded to YouTube over 2 years ago:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvxCv_yrcCY

Now… that video was uploaded on September 9, 2008.  And it sat there, largely unnoticed.  Sure, it slowly picked up views in batches of a few thousand here and there, but it didn’t rocket to viral stardom until just this past week.  Check out the YouTube stats below the video:

I’m sure the original uploader is freaking out right now, wondering how a two-year-old video could suddenly just explode.  And now there are even parodies popping up, like this one that dubs in what the cats might be saying:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3iFhLdWjqc

So what is my point in all this?  There are several, actually:

1. You can go viral at any time.  It could be the day you upload, or years down the road.
2. Judging viral success just got a lot harder, since you can’t really ever call a video a dud—you never know when it will strike a chord down the line and go belatedly viral.
3. Video quality alone will not cause viral success.  There have to be triggers in the form of social media or content aggregators like Facebook, Twitter, Buzzfeed, or Reddit.

A video has to be shared if it’s going to go viral, and some sources are better sharers than others.  For instance, emailing a video link is a share, right?  But it’s not likely to turn into more than one or two views (depending on how many people you send the clip to).  But making the front page at Devour or Buzzfeed can do wonders for a video, bringing a nice collection of seed views from which the viral snowball can begin to grow.

The days of simply uploading a great video and hoping for the best are over.  Successful online videos simply must have a strategic element in place if they hope to go viral.  You can—and should—plan for the social behavior that your video will need if you want it to be shared by viewers.  Which, as it turns out, is exactly what Sharethrough was created to help brands do.

The things in the news drive how we behave online.  For instance, right now, as I write this, Yahoo says that “Gayle King” is a trending search query.  King is Oprah’s best friend and was the center of discussion in an interview with Winfrey released yesterday.

Turns out current events and pop-culture play a big role in popular online activity beyond search as well. By way of an example, take this video showing an artist’s rendering of the proposed soccer stadiums for Qatar’s World Cup bid:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-z2jtUS9-Y

Now, I first saw this video back when the World Cup was about to get underway in South Africa.  There was a lot of talk in the news about the United States’ attempt to host a future World Cup tournament—actually, several countries were making pretty impressive overtures to FIFA (the worldwide governing body for the sport of soccer).

One such country was Qatar, and part of their “wow factor” was the fact that they wanted to build stadiums with inventive architecture—oh, and they are going to be open-air stadiums that are still somehow air-conditioned.  So when the video hit in April of this year, it went viral and amassed 500,000 views in its first few months online.

Then, about a week ago, FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup tournament to Qatar in what is generally considered to be a huge upset (some in the U.S. have openly suggested that FIFA is a bribe-accepting corrupt organization).  Which made the Qatar stadium a popular current event topic once again.  And guess what happened… the video had a viral reincarnation—it shot up to 1.8 million views in just the last week, nearly tripling the original view count in a fraction of the time.

There is so much more that drives our viral video success or failure than just the content itself.  Timing is huge, as is picking a topic or theme that has already captured the nation’s attention.  This is a lot easier to say than it is to do, because you have to either get lucky by predicting what the next hot subject will be… or you have to act with lightning speed once a new pop-culture story breaks.  How powerful is a video topic that is current, relevant, and fresh?  So powerful it can make your video go viral. And then go viral again.

There is a subtle passing-of-the-torch going on right now in the world of viral video, and it involves the most popular gadget being discussed, hacked, or modified.  After a long run at the top, the iPad is slowly giving way to the Xbox Kinect, as developers around the world are uploading mind-blowing videos of what their genius and the Xbox Kinect can accomplish together.

Take this guy, who managed to create a fairly good 3D effect using just two Kinect devices:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-w7UXCAUJE

It’s gathered up a respectable 800,000 views (as of this writing) in just about nine days.  And it’s easy to see why—a pair of simple video game accessories is being used to create an impressive 3D reconstruction.  It feels like you’re watching something that won’t be invented for a few more years.

Then, this week, another hyper-intelligent developer took it to the next level.  Using the film Minority Report as inspiration, he recreated the touch-free interactive video screen Tom Cruise uses in the movie… using only a Kinect, Linux, and an open-source robotics package called “ROS.”  (If you need a reminder, this clip shows off the Minority Report computer interface).  If you’re ready to be really impressed, check it out:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlLschoMhuE

Now… a lot of smart people have been creating their own versions of this “Minority Report” interface for a good few years now.  But none of them used something so inexpensive and innocuous as a piece of video game hardware.  Doing a lot with very little is always a fantastic way to get noticed by online video audiences—particularly when you’re able to recreate something from the canon of science fiction stories that was previously thought to be either impossible or at least many years away from the present.

There’s a new sub-genre emerging in branded online videos that involves using high-def or sped-up film to show how a company’s product is made.  It gives viewers a rare look behind the curtain at a process that is normally hidden from consumers by design.  There’s even an entire television show devoted to this kind of thing on the Discovery Channel–it’s called “How It’s Made.”

You might have seen the video in this style made by Southwest Airlines last year, which showcased the making (and painting) of their new aircraft, Florida One.

And now Chevy is getting in on the act, with a piece that is both high definition and high speed.  In just under two minutes you’ll see a Chevy Volt built from beginning to end.  It’s pretty neat, take a look:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3dZfvTLbBE

The Chevy Volt is GM’s hotly-anticipated new mid-range hybrid car, which has already drawn some pretty high praise.  Motor Trend and several other industry publications have already given the Volt the Car of the Year award.

There is already considerable interest in the car, from environmentalists out to save the world to penny pinching suburbanites hoping to save money on gasoline.  But that being said, it’s impressive that they’re trying to get a little outside the box–rather than giving us the same-old standard car commercials. Early results show that the strategy is working – the video has quickly amassed a few hundred thousand views in just five days since its launch.

The best branded viral videos are the ones that achieve multiple goals at once.  It’s not always enough to merely entertain–at least if you have conversion goals in mind beyond audience laughter.  This video definitely entertains, and does so on multiple levels.  But it also accomplishes several of the brand’s more traditional commercial goals as well. It reminds the viewer that the Volt is coming soon, and why it’s a unique kind of vehicle.  Pairing those messages with some pretty engrossing assembly line footage results in that rarest of viral clips where both the audience and the brand come away feeling like they got the better end of the deal.

What happens when you bring together the most forward-thinking & influential people in creative, media and technology and have them party together at Sharethrough headquarters?…Well, here’s a taste.  Stay tuned – more events to come!