VideoSlush has added the ability for you to get a badge to put on your own web site or blog pages. The badge shows the last 3 videos you’ve purchased. I’ve added Videodrome’s badge to the sidebar of the blog so you can see how it looks.
There’s also a link to this page from your profile page, underneath your Bio section.
One Note: This badge doesn’t work in MySpace or Facebook – they both cleanup the code in such a way that breaks the badge.
We need your help to grow the VideoSlush community!
Here are 5 easy ways you can help the cause:
1) Invite Friends to join VideoSlush
Get your friends on board, and use the Invite Friends feature to earn extra Slush while you’re at it.
For each friend you invite, you receive a bonus based on the profit they make playing VideoSlush their first few weeks.
2) Blog about VideoSlush.com
We’d love it if you blogged about your VideoSlush playing sessions.
Blogger Gary Conn wrote about VideoSlush in this entry.
Thanks Gary!
3) Tell us about yourselves and we will feature you
Post in the Forum about your experiences playing VideoSlush.
We’ll feature members in the VideoSlush blog and link to your site.
4) Tell us where you think we should promote the site
Know where people who may enjoy VideoSlush are hanging out? Let us know and we will invite them to join us.
5) Have Fun
Playing the game and having fun is the best way to spread the word. Fun people want to hang out with others having fun. :)
A huge part of becoming a true SlushMaster is finding the right videos on YouTube to add to VideoSlush.
There are two ways to add a video – one is the traditional method of copying the URL from YouTube and pasting it on the Add Video page.
The other is the “Buy in VideoSlush” bookmarklet. VideoSlush allows you to create a button or bookmark in your browser that automatically buys the YouTube video you’re watching from YouTube itself.
To create the bookmarklet, go to the Add Video page:
Scroll down to the videoslush “buy” bookmarklet section:
Follow the directions there according to the browser you’re using:
In Firefox, the button will look like this:
In IE:
Then, any time you’re watching a YouTube video, just click on the button/bookmark:
Voila – it will take you directly to the VideoSlush buy screen – no cut and paste necessary!
VideoSlush’s design allows players to discover emergent gameplay and new ways to trade YouTube videos!
YouTube rotates Front Page video ads at 9:00 PM Pacific Time almost every night. Due to the prominent placement of these ads, they tend to generate a lot of Views and make lucrative trades.
Trading these ads are a little like a raid in a MMOG or a time-based event in Animal Crossing. People gather around at a set time to compete, socialize, and earn Slush.
When you find the FP video, add it to VideoSlush by clicking on the video’s link.
Once you’ve get to the video’s page, find the “more” link in the info box.
Click on the “more” link to expand the info, copy the URL, and paste it into VideoSlush.
The Views for FP videos can vary wildly depending on how the YouTube demographics react to the subject of the ad.
The better you can read the minds of the YouTube demographics, the more accurate your guess will be! Better guesses gives you more Slush Bonus when you sell the video!
See you at the FP event!
Q: It’s really tough for me to guess which videos will be trending up… almost all the ones I pick end up trending down…
A: When you pick a video to trade in VideoSlush, you need to think, “How and Why is this video going to get clicked on and get viewed?”
It usually boils down to 4 things:
1) People actively search for a video because the event just happened! (Marie Osmond fainted on TV, find it on YouTube!!)
2) The video is created by a known author. (Like WHATTHEBUCKSHOW.)
3) The video is featured somewhere prominent where people click a lot. (An ad on YouTube front page, a video featured on a prominent blog, etc.).
4) Something “magical” and chaotic happens, and the video just starts getting passed around like wildfire! (Witness Chris Crocker’s classic, “Leave Britney Alone!”) This is usually due to a super emotional response by viewers and is the most challenging to predict.
Old videos (ie: Usually more the 2 days old!) don’t do that well in VideoSlush, unless they suddenly appear somewhere prominent that make people click on them or look them up.
Have fun hunting for viral videos!
Here’s an easy way to see if a video has potential to get a lot of views.
Let’s say you find a video, “The Elders of Mocko Comedy Show Episode 6”, on YouTube that you find intriguing.
You watch the video, and it’s pretty funny!! Not to mention that it doesn’t have a lot of views yet, so it’d be a cheap buy on VideoSlush.
What now?
One of the easiest ways to peek into the future is to look at the author’s past.
When you get to the author’s page, scroll down to see if he/she uploaded any videos in the past.
Well, looks like his previous videos were duds. Views-wise at least. The best video had 1,415 Views in 1 month, that’s an average of about 47 Views a day.
Unless the author starts a giant PR campaign, or if Perez Hilton puts the video on his blog, or YouTube decides to feature him, I think Mocko Episode 6 will probably get no more than 47 average Views a day as well…
That said, sometimes viral videos seem to take off for no apparent reason either! But looking at the past will usually give a good indicator of the future.
Note : Videos become viral when people send them to all their friends! Getting featured on YouTube or another popular site doesn’t hurt either.
Note : Try adding the top SlushMasters to your Watch List to see what kind of buys they are making. Follow their footsteps to learn and make some Slush!
Note : It’s fun to add your own videos. Give it a shot, it’s very easy.
Note : You can buy and sell videos at any time to make a profit. If you hold a video until Noon tomorrow (Pacific Time), you will get a bonus for guessing Views accurately!
Note : Time your sell at the peak, before the price drops. Squeeze the most Slush out of every video!
Because YouTube and VideoSlush update at different times, good old fashioned arbitrage is possible!
Here’s an example:
Notice in the picture above, Tyson’s Trip to the Oprah Show has 95,182 Views. The blue line in the chart also shows that Views have not updated for a bit as well.
At this point, you may be tempted to sell the video, if you are holding the video. Or if you don’t own the video, is this a potentially good buy?
Click on the embedded video! Let’s see what’s going on with Tyson’s Cat on YouTube.
Well, well, well… Looks like Tyson’s got 191,000 Views on YouTube! This is almost 100,000 Views more than VideoSlush is showing! Looks like YouTube updated before VideoSlush did.
It’s time to take advantage of this and buy, buy, buy in VideoSlush!
As you can see, when VideoSlush updated the Views, the Price shot up along with it.
Now you’ve arbitraged Oprah’s video on VideoSlush! Well done, SlushMaster.
There are many ways to assess whether a video has potential to go viral.
The first thing to do is to check when a video was uploaded to YouTube:
Here’s an example:
This video was uploaded to YouTube back in May and recently added to VideoSlush. Unless a catalyst happens (the video gets featured on YouTube, gets linked to from a big site, etc), it won’t get enough Views to push the price up.
Look what happened to its price after it was added to VideoSlush:
“Windmills of your mind” had over 6400 Views (Blue Line) when it was added to VideoSlush.
The Views by Hour bar chart shows that the video is gaining between 1 to 30 Views per hour. Some hours don’t have data, because YouTube doesn’t update every hour.
Price (Green Line) steadily declines because the video isn’t getting enough Views to push Price up. Once Price gets in this state, it’s almost impossible for it to shoot back up.
One of the biggest lessons here is that videos newly uploaded to YouTube have the potential to get discovered and take off rapidly, while older videos that never took off usually continue to languish in eternal doldrums. Anything over 2-3 days is “old” in the online video space! Remember, all bets are off if an older video gets featured on YouTube or gets linked to from popular sites.
This simple tip should help you avoid losing some Slush!
I’ve always been fascinated with how trends start, grow, and die.
Whether they’re business boom-bust cycles, pop culture fads, or stock prices, similar patterns exist.
Different disciplines have described how trends work. My favorite explanation is George Soros’s Theory of Reflexivity. Soros is one of the world’s best currency and stocks speculators.
Simply put, the Theory of Reflexivity states that a jolt in the market influences the perceptions of the individuals interacting with the market. Meanwhile, the individuals engaging with the market also change the fundamentals of the market. The back and forth creates a massive feedback loop, creating a trend.
With this in mind, online videos are a perfect medium for observing Soros’s theory at play.
YouTube is a marketplace where authors compete for attention from viewers. The infinite supply of short, user-generated snippets makes each video more disposable, fulfilling Andy Warhol’s “15 minute of fame” prophecy.
The metric for defining the popularity of videos is Views, and VideoSlush’s pricing structure is based on the rate of change of a video’s Views. To continually increase price, more and more people are needed to watch the video. The expansion eventually becomes unsustainable and dies.
Reflexivity occurs when VideoSlush traders watch YouTube videos, increasing Views. The quickly rising Views increase the price of the video. If the trend of the views rises fast enough, more traders are drawn to the video, further increasing the views. Due to the rapid stream of video releases, full-fledged mini-bubbles happen in 1-3 day cycles.
As a side note, Warhol’s “manufactured art” also exemplifies reflexivity. The subjects of his art, like Marilyn Monroe, are already famous, which makes the audience like the art. And with more people liking the art, the art itself becomes more famous as well.
Next time you see something cool (like a funny video blog from YouTube ) on something mainstream (like Entertainment Tonight), you know the trend is close to over. In order for the trend to continue, the video must be distributed through a larger channel so it can reach an even larger audience. The expansion becomes unsustainable, and the trend dies at the peak of its popularity!
I hope this gives you the high level context for the game! I’ll be giving VideoSlush gameplay strategies in future entries.
