14 DAY TRIAL // 2010 is almost here and we need to make sure the holidays don't catch us unprepared. Well, the New Year is a month away and with the amount of 'holiday cheer', otherwise known as marketing, every company, site and organization worth its salt even castaways on remote islands have no chance of missing it. YouTube is doing its part with an Advent-style calendar celebrating, what else, the viral videos of the year.
“We'd give you chocolates with it if we could: This week marks the launch of our advent-style calendar counting down some of the most memorable videos of the year on YouTube,” Mark Day, Marketing Programs Manager, wrote. “Without giving too much away, you can expect to see some well-known YouTube videographers on the countdown, along with breakout viral videos and a selection of the year's biggest pop-culture phenoms and memes.”
Most people would've probably taken the chocolate. On the other hand, everyone loves a savory Fred video or maybe the occasional sleepy kitty clip, when Solitaire and Minesweeper just won't cut it anymore. YouTube says all sorts of clips will make it to the countdown and not necessarily the most viewed videos of the years. In fact, the site makes it clear that the videos selection is curated and it gets to pick the videos without a particularly scientific approach.
The countdown started out with MysteryGuitarMan’s “Guitar: Impossible,” YouTube sure does love its guitar videos and continued with “Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog.” The last entry, so far, is everyone's favorite Fred thanking his fans for being the first channel to reach one million subscribers on YouTube. Finally, what's Christmas without a little product placement, and YouTube certainly delivers on this as well as the whole thing is sponsored by Samsung's U10 pocket video camera, its answer to the somewhat popular Flip series of cameras. Just 28 more videos to go, before we find out 2009s 'video of the year'.