I stumbled on the new Wolverine (official) trailer today on MySpace (Thanks to Mafia Wars who got me to return to Myspace to play) and I got curious. Since Youtube is the #1 reference for videos on the web I decided to make a quick search there and while I am at it, why not Google the new movie as well? I was surprised to see MySpace beat Youtube by 3 days.
X-Men Origins published the MySpace Video on December 12, 2008 and racked up near 1.7 million views after 4 days.
On the other hand,
TrailerAddictHQ and
Madblaster6 posted the Youtube videos on December 15, 2008 and racked up a combine count of over 60k views.
After I found the
official web site of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie (which by the way took me over 5 Google search. I had to search for "X-Men Origins: Wolverine official" to find it. "Wolverine Movie" doesn't even bring up the web page on the first page...), I thought it was interesting that the web site doesn't even have an embed of the movie. Instead, it encourages the visitors to visit Myspace to watch the trailer.
Of course, they were talking about softwares but I believe this is also true in Social Media Marketing. Thanks to social media, sharing is very easy, therefore if you are the first, you have the monopoly and the advantage the longest. Despite Youtube being the largest and the first video reference on the web, MySpace will have the most viewed version of this trailer because it has been shared many times before Youtube got the version. This effect is also exponential and Youtube is playing against the odd in this situation. The more the MySpace trailer is shared and embeded on the internet, the harder it will be for Youtube to match MySpace's visibility.
I am aware that this is a simple trailer but it is important to understand that this is true for any campaign and once the campaign becomes bigger than the media, in this case Youtube vs MySpace, Youtube will have to wake up and understand that it cannot just sit back and expect to be the #1 video reference of the web by default. I believe that Youtube Live establishes Youtube as an entertainment powerhouse in mind shares but Youtube must also execute web strategies to maintain it's position. Vimeo and other video sharing/streaming websites are far behind Youtube and might never be able to overthrow the giant but MySpace is showing how it can be done if Youtube is not paying attention. I believe this is good for social media competition because it will force Youtube to step and it makes sure that the giant cannot be lazy.
I give Myspace a thumbs up and I will keep my eyes open to see if MySpace will step up and become more aggressive. I am curious to know if they have anything else under their sleeves. Is this the beggining of a great rise for MySpace in becoming Hollywood's #1 social media outlet or is this a simple fluke? I stumbled on the video because MySpace proposed it to me. I hope it wasn't simply an advertising initiative from the motion picture's marketing team and if it was a fluke, I hope that MySpace wakes up and build on this great door that just opened to them. I leave you with the trailer of the movie (which by the way, I am super psyched about, I really hope marvel develops a sub genre in Hollywood!)
09/01/09 UPDATE:
I removed the MySpace video because it loads automatically and really annoyed me. I'm guessing it is also very annoying for anybody visiting this page. I couldn't find a way to edit the code to not make it load automatically (if you know how, please tell me). So I replaced the video with a Youtube clip. So much for a MySpace advantage huh?
