Posted on 07/15/2010 3:39:45 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
That's Ari Melber's why-didn't-I-think-of-it phrase to describe the ratio of media attention Sarah Palin receives to the supporters inspired by what she does. His test case: the "Mama Grizzlies" video, which spliced audio of her speech to the Susan B. Anthony List with video of her meeting with activists, and inspired coverage unheard of for a YouTube video not starring Osama bin Laden or Chris Crocker.
In the week since it was first posted on Palin’s Facebook page, which boasts over 1.8 million backers, the video has drawn 368,000 views. Yet despite her large following, only 33,000 people watched the video via Facebook, according to YouTube statistics. That means only one out of ten viewers found “Mama Grizzlies” through Palin’s social network -- and under 2 percent of her Facebook community watched the video. So who did watch “Mama Grizzlies”? Mostly traditional news readers and Palin detractors. Almost a third of all views came through an article on Yahoo! News, for example, while ratings for the video ran almost two-to-one for “dislike” over “like.”
“The bulk of the views seem to come after it had been covered in the mainstream media,” observes Pete Warden, a social media analyst who has studied Palin’s Facebook strategy. “She is still reaching a lot more people indirectly through the media than through Facebook and Twitter and the other direct channels,” added Warden, a former engineer at Apple.
Yes, even the lowest estimate for how much attention this video got from Palin fans has her drawing in more than, say, the latest Tim Pawlenty joint.
(Excerpt) Read more at andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com ...
The larger point of releasing web video-mercials is to get the larger media talking about it and to thus generate exposure as good as if the media had been paid for the commercial. That’s exactly what Palin got out of it.
Also, a video like that is intended to reach out to those who are not yet sold on her, but could be. She doesn’t really need a video for those who are already so in her corner that they’re Facebook friends.
And this is a media guy writing on the media?
Not to mention a web video is much cheaper. Who wants to spend $500,000 on an ad run on CBS?
And then filling in for Sullivan he tried to re-establish his conservative cred by chastizing Sullivan’s creepy not-Palin’s-baby theoried and obsession.
Anyone who thinks the view count on YouTube is accurate needs to conduct their own experiment. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen “301 views” knowing full well I had watched that particular video 5 times to test it out. The view count never changed.
The view count is not updated continuously, and youtube has measures to try to control "spamming" of views, which starts to kick in at 300 views to try to do things like eliminate multiple counts from the same person.
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