Crowd Source Videos- The future?

In the first quarter of 2013, usher in a new phenomenon- Crowd Source Videos. The popularity of an old soundtrack- Harlem Shake shows us all. In an office, a funky person enters the busy office in a motorbike helmet (where’s the courtesy to remove it when entering a formal location?!?!) for the first 10s. Then, drop in the bass and everyone starts to be involve in some form of random and totally repetitive action for 30s. This is the future of entertainment. FYI, this video had been seen over 10 million times just on Youtube.

Harlem shake is not exactly a new song, and the popularity rises recently just because of a youtube video (the original single does not even have a MV). Through shares and likes, Harlem Shake soon became a sensation. Curators hate to love it, lovers love to hate it.    Even some units of BBC had started riding on Harlem Shake, with Holby City and Eastenders (and also more, but I’m just not really keen to mention them). 

What constitutes to the popularity of such videos? First came Gangnam Style, now Harlem Shake. This should lies on the concept of Crowd Source Videos. Same as crowd-sourcing, whereby an online community pool together resources, crowd-sourcing involves viewers of a particular video to upload their own version online. Usually such video have an easy concept, and is also easy to duplicate. This explains the numerous parodies of Gangnam Style videos. The catchy tune and weird looking horse-riding dance movement strides a chord with the online community and the person having the last laugh (as well as shaking to the bank) will be Psy.

Now with a high smartphone penetration rate in developed nations, and all smartphone have a video capturing function with easy uploading to Youtube, helps increase the platform and infrastructure of such Crowd Source Videos. You upload it to share with your friends and in turn, your friends will share the video and might also upload their own version at the same time. Thus far, Crowd Source Videos had been limited to just personal entertainment, but soon, some brands will adopt it.

Just like your daily exposure of advertisements, if one is exposed to a lot of such videos, viewers might become frustrated and deemed It as a nuisance. For Harlem Shake and Gangnam style, many had already passed it off as a fade and hated the videos (and so for similar video, will also express scant interest). As a PR stunt many brands had start to adopt this, but ultimately, will it continue to hurt their brand image?

Crowd source videos had been around for a long time, but just 3 years ago, are not as popular as before. This might be due to people still not being open and also not having appropriate means to be involve. Other crowd source videos in the past includes Cinnamon challenge (which proves to be highly controversial), Brad Pitt ad, Gangnam Style, Harlem Shake and Where the hell is Matt ad. Now, what will be the next crazy ass fade on Youtube?