Pete Williams, marketer extraordinaire, Cleo Bachelor of the year finalist, and leading Australian entrepreneur, has done a little interview with me about the You Tube video I did a few weeks ago. I admit I was chuffed when he asked me, as I see Pete as a shining example of what you can achieve if you just get out there and do it.

Check Out The Interview Here

As you may recall, my video of the streaking incident at the cricket a few weeks ago did fairly well. In the time since it went up and got the result it did, I've had numerous people ask me how I did it. I've had questions about various web 2.0 techniques, software I might have used, and whether I'd do it for some other people. In truth, I've been a little overwhelmed by the attention.

When Pete asked me about the interview though, I thought that would be a great way to share what I did. So, want to know how I went about it?

The answer is simple, go here to find out.

Watch the video below, and follow the excercise the video asks.

Pretty cool huh? It's been done a few times with a few variations, but it's from a book I read a few years ago called Did You Spot The Gorilla by a guy called Richard Wiseman.

Basically, the book talks about the fact that when we put our focus in one particular area or aspect of a situation, we can miss out on an opportunity that's right in front of us. Actually, reading that, I kind of miss the point myself, so here's the blurb from the inside flap of the books cover instead.

In a recent series of ground-breaking psychological experiments, volunteers were shown a 30-second film of some people playing basketball, and told to count the number of passes made with the ball. After just a few seconds, a man dressed as a gorilla slowly walked into the frame, beat his chest at the camera, and sauntered off. Unbelievably, almost none of the people watching the film noticed the gorilla.

Exactly the same psychological mechanisms that caused people to miss the gorilla also cause them to miss unexpected but important opportunities in their professional and personal lives. This book outlines the scientific evidence and thinking behind this remarkable new phenomenon, and shows you how you can spot gorillas in your life - and what to do when you see one.

So what's the relevance here? It's pretty obvious really. Once we get ourselves immersed in the world of internet marketing and sign ourselves up to a few lists, we get inundated daily and it gets hard to see where the value is. Take Frank Kern's Mass Control recently. I got email from so many people with so many offers, that became the focus, who's got the best bonuses? The gorilla in this situation was Frank's series of videos for the launch. They were brilliant, but I bet that many people still haven't watched them all because at the time they were focussing on the launch emails instead.

If you haven't taken the time to watch, do yourself a favor and do so. Soon. Today even.

Mass Control Videos

Last week I checked out Jason Moffatt groundbreaking debut on Justn TV. It was very, very cool and Jason's cool meter just shot through the roof. Make sure you check out his show: www.justin.tv/jasonmoffatt

Tomorrow marks another official debut on Justin TV, by none other than Mr Ed Dale. What makes this debut so special is what he is going to be sharing.

Tomorrow is the first official episode of Thirty Day Challenge television. The challenge this year is going to be even bigger than last year, which I would never have thought possible. And the show that Ed has planned will be revealing some details about the Thirty Day Challenge 2008 for the first time. Ed also has some surprises, and they're pretty cool all by themselves.

Last Friday night Australian time, Ed jumped on to do some testing for his show and put out a twitter to get some viewers to gauge the success of what he was testing. Man it was cool. The stuff Ed was trialing was very, very impressive. It felt like getting early access or a backdoor pass to see a concert before it launches. Others who were in on the testing will agree. Most Justin TV shows consist of guys or girls sitting in front of their computers and they get old really fast (Jason is the exception here, as his show is just brilliant).

So, tomorrow, Monday 8.30pm EST US time, Ed will be starting the show. Make sure you get yourself setup and logged on prior to the call. I'm guessing Ed will be testing the limits of the Justin TV platform in terms of both its ability to handle the number of people logging on, and the capabilities of the video.

EDTV

You may or may not be aware of a You Tube video that I uploaded last week. It's now been up for just over a week, and it's currently sitting at just over 700,000 views. Yes, 700,000.

I'm not going to make any claim of being an online video guru or of using some special voodoo to have made this happen (there was a little voodoo, but nothing over the top).

If you haven't seen it, it's a short clip of Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds knocking a streaker flat on his back. Here's the clip below:

I'm betting every Australian reading this has seen that clip at some point in the last week. The reason I got so many views was the timing. This video was up inside the hour of when it occurred on TV. The timing was crucial. A lot of other people have since posted this clip, and none of them have gotten close. The timing was one reason, but the main reason was my choice of keywords and title.

So many of the other versions of this video used descriptive language or slang, and left out the crictical keywords. Some didn't even really consider the keywords at all. The keywords is where this video hit its tipping point. The following day the streaker incident became a classic watercooler story, "Did you see Symonds last night?", "Did you see that streaker get flattened?" Most people these days, when they want to find a video of something, the first place they look is You Tube. And the first thing they do is type in a couple of choice keywords. The keywords that I used but not enough other people did.

Here's some stats after the first 2 days:

The honors for this are incredible. All those number 1 spots meant that people overseas who never would have looked for the video are now seeing it in the top viewed categories. So once it was in front of people they were intrigued. No obviously this is the sort of video that is a flash in the pan. After a week the incident will be forgotten.

Some stats after a week:

You can see that it's dropped off enormously in terms of honors. Most of the honors the video held were weekly ones, so that's cool. The stats are still pretty amazing after a week, and my next goal is create something that gets the same kind of buzz that'll go for a month. It's all about the timing and keeping your eyes open.