It’s Lunchtime and You’re Hungry

Here's the quick-and-dirty sketch for a motion-graphics video I wanted to produce several years ago:

It's lunchtime and you're hungry. You're in the mood for Chinese, somewhere in North Arlington. You Yelp a recommendation, and the Rosslyn-based China Garden catches your eye.

(Maybe work in a reference to a metro app that tells you the times of the trains, or an SMS to Red Top to request a pick-up?) You Google Map directions.

When you arrive, you check-in on Foursquare. A friend sees your check-in on Facebook, and since she's in the area, messages you about desert at Whitlow's.

"Yes, please," you reply.

When the brownie sundae arrives, it looks so good, you Foodspot it.

Unfortunately, the food is better than the service, so you tweet a question about tipping. Within a minute, you have half a dozen suggestions.

The next day, you get a Groupon e-mail for "the best dim sum in DC"—at China Garden.

When Is a Video View Not a View?

NETWORK	COUNT
Twitch	Instantly
Vimeo	Instantly
Snapchat	1
Facebook	3
Twitter	3
Instagram	3
YouTube	30*
Vine	Completion*

The Online Video View: We Can Count It, but Can We Count on It?

If You Have a Ton of Fans, Your Videos May Perform Better on Facebook Than on YouTube

In the first four hours, Facebook users watched the above video 2.4 million times. On YouTube, the four-minute clip garnered just a few thousand views during that time.

Hmm. Isn’t YouTube the go-to social network for video? Maybe not. The Times explains:

“Many of Beyoncé’s 64 million Facebook fans spotted the video in their news feeds and shared it with their friends. People who saw it on YouTube did not have such an easy way to spread their enthusiasm.”

Addendum (4/29/2015): BuzzFeed’s data show that YouTubers prefer informational videos, while Facebookers prefer identity-based videos.

Addendum (7/16/2015): How Facebook’s video-traffic explosion is shaking up the advertising world