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For newsy online video, first can be best

By Phillip de Wet

15 Apr 2010

When The Daily Maverick last week published a 17-second video of ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema kicking BBC journalist Jonah Fisher out of a news conference, we expected slightly more than normal interest. Instead it's gotten almost 180 000 so far people viewing the clip, most of them within two days. [video]

Isn't the best

It isn't the best piece of video available of the incident in which Fisher was kicked out of Luthuli House after questioning Malema. It is arguably not even the best piece of video available online; Times Live published a considerably longer and more complete clip.

But while the Times Live video had so far drawn less than 40 000 views (as of Tuesday, 13 April 2010), the Daily Maverick's clip of the incident has seen more than almost 180 000 views (as of today, Thursday 15 April) on YouTube .

Published first

Why? Because it was published first.

Within minutes of the altercation - and while the media conference was still underway minus Fisher - The Daily Maverick published a short report on what happened, embedding the YouTube video as illustration.

As a matter of policy, The Daily Maverick publishes all its video on YouTube and allows anyone to embed (say, in a competing news article) it or watch it through any of the mechanisms YouTube makes available. It does, however, insert a promotional overlay into the video, which generally just identifies the website as the origin.

Result

On the one hand, the result is that not all of the traffic on the Fisher video went to The Daily Maverick's website.

On the other hand, it didn't have to carry the costs of the infrastructure that would be required to handle such a traffic spike, and it benefitted from what is effectively advertising exposure that can be valued in deep six-figure territory.

About Phillip de Wet

Phillip de Wet is deputy editor of The Daily Maverick (www.dailymaverick.co.za), with extensive experience in the fields of technology, business and media, plus occasional forays into politics, property and general interest news. Follow him on Twitter at @phillipdewet.