Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz discovered YouTube yesterday in a blog entry headlined “The Video Revolution,” where he attempts to make the case that the white-hot clip-sharing site is on the verge of becoming a major player in politics.
Not so fast.
In fact, Kurtz’s piece leads one toward the exact opposite conclusion: YouTube may become a lot of things, but a political force does not appear to be one of them — at least not any time soon. How so? Kurtz does provide a few of the clues himself, although he fails to put them in perspective.
YouTube says it dishes up 80 million video views every day — an astonishing number — but it turns out that precious few of those views have anything to do with mainstream politics. The political clips cited by Kurtz — dreadfully boring fare, for the most part — have been seen a few hundred to a few thousand times apiece; a drop in the bucket, not a building tidal wave.
A quick trip to YouTube gathered up these numbers for the two pols considered by most to be their party’s leading candidates for president in 2008, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.:
The most-viewed McCain video — seen by 19,000 YouTube visitors over three months — is of an appearance of his on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Given that Stewart may be the bigger of the two celebrities, it’s difficult to apportion McCain’s percentage of that draw, which is modest in any case by Web standards. The next most popular McCain video has been watched only about 3,000 times in two months; again, more in line with friends and family than an untapped reservoir of political might.
As for Clinton, the numbers are no more impressive, with the most popular clip featuring her registering 7,700 views over two months.
Granted, YouTube is only 18 months old and the potential for political and advertising professionals to manipulate the site and others like it is obvious, but these are not the kinds of numbers upon which revolutions are built.
By way of comparison, the all-time, most-viewed YouTube video is a 6-minute comedic routine called “The Evolution of Dance,” which has been watched 28 million times since being posted April 6. (If you’re not yet among the 28 million, invest the 6 minutes.)
People go to YouTube to be amused, entertained or amazed. Visually speaking, politics is rarely amusing, entertaining or amazing. The challenge for politicians and their handlers who want to make hay with such sites will be to overcome that inherent limitation. No easy task.
Now maybe if someone posted a video of John McCain and Hillary Clinton reprising “The Evolution of Dance” …
