‘Back’ YouTube videos to go viral

If you pride yourself on your ability to spot YouTube videos before they go viral, a Dublin company has just the thing for you.

Tubett, which is based in Dublin’s Digital Hub, has opened up what it calls a new “social video curation platform” where you can compete with others regarding the likely popularity of YouTube clips.

In what sounds like a cross between a game and the stock market, you can “back” certain videos to go viral. “TubeTrenders” can buy virtual stock and back the videos that they believe will go viral, while the value of the stock fluctuates in proportion to the video’s popularity, based on the number of daily views.

There are also rankings and leader boards, and in the future a league system will operate, allowing schools, faculties and groups to compete among themselves.

One of the co-founders of Tubett, Achman Srivastava, told RTÉ yesterday that the idea was born last year when he spotted the ‘What Does The Fox Say’ clip by Ylvis — aka two Norwegian talk show hosts — on YouTube, when the number of hits it had received were in the low thousands.

It went on to become the most viewed YouTube clip last year, and has now racked up more than 431 million views and attracted more than 850,000 comments.

The new venture is backed by the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC), which is an early stage investor in innovation projects.

The NDRC attracted more than €40m in commercial investment last year, while almost 200 jobs were created at NDRC-backed companies.