Back in October it occurred to me that it had been 5 years since the White Sox beat the Astros to win the World Series. As I result of that realization, I dug into my video collection and quickly put together and posted this video:
To say that this video is the most popular video I’ve posted on YouTube thus far is an understatement. What’s more interesting, for those of us who work the medium of the web, is the traffic statistics of those who have viewed the video in the past 5 months:
So what do these stats tell us? Well to some extent it tells us a few things we might have already “known”, such as that most baseball fans (or at least White Sox fans) are mature males residing in the United States.
What I find interesting is when people were viewing this little video. Obviously some people viewed it right when I posted it last Oct, during the 2010 World Series. Then, as expected, things go quite for the most part. Then, as Spring Training builds to today’s Opening Day, so does the traffic.
But wait, you might be wondering, what about the spike of traffic in December?[1] What could possibly have driven the largest one-time surge in traffic for a handful of days? Perhaps I engaged in a little social marketing? Or maybe the video got popular on a sports site?
Well as it happened it did get posted on a local sports site, but that doesn’t completely explain the surge, or why said site was posting a baseball video in December.
Why did it get popular so quickly (and fade so quickly) in December? Because, on December 8, 2010, Paul Konerko, the hero of the video, resigned with the Chicago White Sox for 3 more years.
Interesting, No?
[1] Well if you really are a White Sox fan, you might not be wondering, but don’ spoil the ending please?