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Jake Bialer's Take On The Future Of Journalism

An Analysis Of The YouTube Videos Used By Upworthy

As documented previously, Upworthy receives a large proportion of their traffic from YouTube videos.

In this newsletter, based on scraped Upworthy data and statistics calculated from Facebook and YouTube’s APIs (Upworthy data scraped March 10, 2015 and Facebook data calculated April 2nd), I dig into the YouTube videos Upworthy has published to answer the following questions:

  • How long after videos get published on YouTube are they published on Upworthy?

  • What Youtube channels do Upworthy’s videos come from?

  • How many Upworthy YouTube videos posted on their site are now inactive?

 

How Long After Getting Published On YouTube Are They Published On Upworthy?


Everyday media outlets compete to publish posts on YouTube videos as soon they’re published. A video surfaces from a popular YouTube channel or on the YouTube trending list, and then media outlets race to embed it and grab some of its traffic.

But there is another race: finding older content on YouTube that is undiscovered or can go viral again. This race involves digging through old YouTube videos, keeping a pulse on social media, and recognizing when it is time to resurface content that was popular long ago. This is related to a broader trend of media outlets resurfacing old content.

What's noteworthy about Upworthy's video postings is that most of the videos posted on their site aren't published on Upworthy soon after they're published on YouTube.

While Upworthy does its fair share of publishing recently published videos (5% in less than a day; 28% in the first 10 days; 46% in the first 30 days), 54% of their videos are published on Upworthy over 30 days after they appeared on YouTube.

Overall, YouTube videos are published on Upworthy a median of 35 days after they're published on YouTube.

On the extreme end of the scale, Upworthy has dug up some really old videos and seen good traffic returns from them.

On October 14, 2014, Upworthy published a post on Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire. The post, to date, has received 25,189 total Facebook actions. Published 3,194 days after January 16, 2006, when the Jon Stewart YouTube video first published, the post represents the longest time period between YouTube publish date and Upworthy publish date.

Here are a couple of other Upworthy videos that were published on Upworthy long after their publish date on YouTube

  • http://www.upworthy.com/a-comedian-repeats-the-same-7-words-over-and-over-again-and-by-125-im-on-the-floor    Published on Upworthy 2,756 days after YouTube. 29,560 total FB actions to date

  • http://www.upworthy.com/theres-a-good-reason-this-18-year-old-kid-talked-back-to-his-teacher-walked-out-and-got-an-f    Published on Upworthy 2,691 days after YouTube. 52,280 total FB actions to date

Upworthy’s curators have a talent for finding YouTube content that was once popular, or even never popular, and then picking the right headline and packaging for it, releasing it to the world, and getting a lot of traffic from it. Unlike most other media organizations, Upworthy's posts are designed to be evergreen with no timestamp indicating when they were published.

 


What YouTube Channels Do Upworthy’s Videos Come From?


Upworthy’s curators search the Internet for great content and focus on the perfect packaging for it. A lot of Upworthy’s advantage comes from its ability to find videos.
But a good share of their traffic comes from the same YouTube accounts. In fact, their top 50 YouTube channels account for about 22 % of their total posts and approximately 21% of their Facebook traffic from YouTube videos.
So if you wanted to create an Upworthy clone, you could get pretty far (about 1/5 of the way there) by posting the best videos (with optimal packaging) from some of their most used accounts.
In total, approximately 59% of their YouTube videos come from accounts that have been used 2 or more times.
But Upworthy still surfaces a lot of unique stuff: approximately 41% of their YouTube videos come from unique accounts —  accounts that Upworthy has never gotten a video from before.  

Here, for example, are their top 50 most used YouTube accounts

channelTitle

Video Count

TED

80

TEDx Talks

79

Button Poetry

66

The New York Times

46

LastWeekTonight

33

vlogbrothers

32

CNN

31

Comedy Central

29

TED-Ed

29

The Young Turks

29

bravenewfoundation

27

BuzzFeedYellow

27

SoulPancake

27

TakePart

27

THNKR

27

Big Think

25

DNews

24

ThinkProgress TP

24

Upworthy

24

The RSA

23

CGP Grey

21

lacigreen

21

BarackObamadotcom

20

Represent.Us

20

Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell

20

ABC News

19

AsapSCIENCE

19

BuzzFeedVideo

19

NationSwell

19

Brave New Films

18

GatesFoundation

18

Stuff Mom Never Told You - HowStuffWorks

17

TheEllenShow

17

acluvideos

16

PBS NewsHour

16

SciShow

16

tpmtv

16

Vox

16

Human Rights Campaign

15

OWN TV

15

YOUTHSPEAKS

15

AJ+

14

Climate Reality

14

GOOD

14

The White House

14

CollegeHumor

13

Fusion

13

HumanRightsWatch

13

seeprogress

13

AFL-CIO

12

For a lot of these accounts, Upworthy does not post at all close to the day that the video was first published on YouTube.  

Look, for example, in the table below showing the median days the video appeared on Upworthy after the video’s publication date on YouTube for these same 50 accounts that ended up on Upworthy.

 

Channel Title

Median Days After YouTube Publication

TED

277

TEDx Talks

129

Button Poetry

22

The New York Times

16

LastWeekTonight

3

vlogbrothers

10

CNN

13

Comedy Central

35

TED-Ed

100

The Young Turks

12

BuzzFeedYellow

49

SoulPancake

64

THNKR

26

TakePart

27

bravenewfoundation

17

Big Think

74

DNews

38

ThinkProgress TP

2

Upworthy

1

The RSA

331

CGP Grey

35

lacigreen

26

BarackObamadotcom

1

Represent.Us

7

Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell

14

ABC News

45

AsapSCIENCE

69

BuzzFeedVideo

19

NationSwell

43

Brave New Films

14

GatesFoundation

143

Stuff Mom Never Told You - HowStuffWorks

48

TheEllenShow

5

PBS NewsHour

13

SciShow

19

Vox

18

acluvideos

6

tpmtv

0

Human Rights Campaign

3

OWN TV

19

YOUTHSPEAKS

216

AJ+

8

Climate Reality

268

GOOD

239

The White House

2

CollegeHumor

23

Fusion

15

HumanRightsWatch

51

seeprogress

14

AFL-CIO

1

The median days after a video was published on YouTube and then published on Upworthy is greater than 100 days for the following accounts: Ted, Tedx, Ted-Ed, The RSA, GatesFoundation, YOUTHSPEAKS, Climate Reality, and GOOD. Upworthy doesn't need to publish videos from these accounts right after they're published on YouTube. They can wait hundreds of days after these accounts publish videos on YouTube and then repost them on Upworthy.

Notice three of those accounts are TED-related. Upworthy has generated good traffic from finding old TED talks, repackaging them, and then publishing them.

Notice also Upworthy publishes their own videos as well as videos from TPMTV, AFL-CIO, Last Week Tonight, andThe White House right after they're published


How Many Of Upworthy's YouTube Videos Are Inactive?


My process for this analysis — scrape Upworthy’s posts, extract YouTube ids, calculate YouTube stats from the YouTube API — ran into a road bump when I kept finding videos that were published on Upworthy that had no data. It turns out that at least 319 of videos currently sitting on Upworthy’s posts are completely inactive.

For example, look at these posts

One disadvantage to embedding someone else's videos published on third-party site is when those videos become inaccessible, either through a copyright takedown or the video owners decision to remove or make private their video, Upworthy’s nice packaging is left with no content inside of it.  

Now these posts most likely received a bunch of traffic when Upworthy initially posted the videos, before the videos on the posts became inactive. However, without their main content, these posts are costing Upworthy some long tail traffic.
Copyright © 2015 Bialerology, All rights reserved.


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