YouTube To Congress: Your Videos Are Lame
May 15th, 2009
Back in January, both houses of Congress created hubs on YouTube, referring viewers to their representatives’ respective channels. Despite heavy promotion by YouTube, including an ad unit in the “Most-Viewed” sections and several videos being featured on the homepage, most viewers yawned: views for all videos total 10,786,869, or just 19.4% of total views of Lady GaGa’s “Just Dance” music video.
The big surprise? Republicans continue to lead overall, with 6,190,217 views to the Democrats’ 4,596,652 views. Although much is written about a “tech gap” between Obama’s tech-savvy campaign and GOP efforts, that isn’t the case here–rants from Ron Paul and bailout/stimulus “outrage” videos pushed Republicans over the top. On YouTube, the libertarian wing of the Republican party appears to be tech-savvy and adept at making videos go viral when they put their mind to it (just check Ron Paul’s primary views or the Rick Santelli rant that sparked the “Tea Party” movement), which certainly helps the Republicans when properly harnessed.
Of course, since so few videos are posted, the battle for Congressional views is probably not a good barometer for the “netroots” battle, especially considering that this is the most popular video on the Democratic side:
Entry Filed under: Politubing - Online Political Campaign Videos, TubeMogul Research