Catshanghai

My video did not get as many hits as Sarah Silverman singing expletives about Matt Damon, but my rough Youtube movie about the Shanghai flash mob has been viewed more than 12 000 times since I uploaded it on Saturday.It feels good to be the number one video on Youtube for travel and events,  even if it was for just for one day (Sunday). I learnt four things from this endeavour.

• The person who gets something done first has more impact than whoever does it the best.  Better videos of the ‘Frozen in Shanghai’ event appeared on Shanghaiist on Monday. See this link.
• On the Internet you are only as famous as the people who embed or link to your video. CnBeta is a Chinese website that embedded my video and got me over 7000 hits. See this other link.
• People prefer videos to reading text. All those long posts I’ve written have never got me any readers, but a rough 5 minute cellphone movie gets thousands of views from native Chinese speakers. A sticky video has more impact than a 500 word essay.