Team

1147

Team 1147 Report:

Question: If a New Zealand student uploads a video clip that goes viral,
how long will it take before 1% of the worlds population has seen it?
Defining key words of question:
New Zealand student: In New Zealand it is compulsory for children ages 6-16 to
go to school. A New Zealand student is someone studying at a school or
university. Our student is 17 years old.
Video clip: 1 minute long.
Viral: A video clip that popularity grows very quickly.
Time: Hours.
1% of the worlds population: 73 million
Seen: To view, visit or attend as a spectator for over 50% of the videos content.
Introduction and Summary:
Ever since the creation of the internet the world has been able to interact with
each other in matters of seconds. The world started off using the internet as a
platform for sharing information and ideas. From its rapid extension in the mid
1990s to now has meant that not only is it used as a platform for business but
encompassing all parts of human day to day life. Social media is the collective of
online communication channels dedicated to community based input, content-
sharing, interaction and collaboration. Through the accessibility internet social
media enables people around the world to like, comment and share ideas,
opinions and with no barrier of distance and time. What makes humans keep
going to social media for their daily fix? Catching up with the latest news, trends
and gossip. As the world arms themselves with portable cameras social giants
Facebook and Youtube are filled with amateur footage.

A videos popularity can be gauged by the amount of views it gets. What
influences the amount of views a video gets is the way it is shared through social
media. The characteristics these videos share include: being really funny,
something we can relate all relate to, emotional, unexpected and the luck of
recording something when your are at the right place at the right time. It takes
the right combination of these qualities to make a hit video that people want to
view and share.

The question asks how long will it take a viral video uploaded by a New Zealand
student to reach 1% of the worlds population. We are taking the question as to
how many hours it would take to reach 1% of the worlds population. In order to
do this we calculated using social media growth how long it would take to spread
throughout the world.

We calculated in the end that using our formula it would take eight days for a
viral video to reach 1% of the worlds population.
Population sizes:

Team 1147
We know that the worlds population is consistently increasing. The rounded
population estimate of the time 7.3 billion 1(7.3x10^9). 1% of 7.3 billion is 73
million (73x10^6). So for the model we are creating we will be calculating how
long it takes to reach 73 million people.
Censorship:
Nearly all of the countries around the globe have access to the internet but some
have censorship in place that prevent them from accessing Youtube and
Facebook. For many reasons the censorship was due to content on the site that
was not favoured by the government. Most of the countries that have censorship
are not in the top 20 internet users in the world except China. By subtracting the
global internet population from Chinas internet population, 3.17 billion2 minus
618 million equals 2.552 billion we have an estimate for the worlds uncensored
internet population. 73 million (1% of the worlds population) of the worlds
uncensored internet population is 2.9%.

Our model:
We are basing our model for this investigation off what we think would be the
most accurate snapshot of an NZ student. Our student is 17 years old, has 506
friends3, lives in Auckland. The student has created a 1 minute video4 that has
the characteristics of viral video and is being passed around national then global
social media. The student has posted this video at 1800 on a Friday.

A key component to finding out how a video goes viral is in the way it is shared.
Our answer is based on the creator of the video uploading their video to Youtube,
then sharing their video on Facebook as an embeded post on their page. The
video is so popular that the students friends start sharing the post and as with
the social connection of the 21st century the content is passed through New
Zealand and then abroad. As people continue to share the Youtube link people
watch it hence the views increase.

We made an equation that shows how to model number of people that view a
video and in respects to the number of people that interact with it by eg.
Commenting, sharing or liking. This is important as it shows how fast content
can be spread across Facebook.

1 World population http://www.geohive.com/earth/population_now.aspx
2 Global internet population http://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-
users-worldwide/
3 Average Facebook friends http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/18-24-year-olds-on-
facebook-boast-an-average-of-510-friends-28353/
4 The average time of a viral video https://www.minimatters.com/youtube-best-video-length/

Team 1147

The above graph is only a model, as it does not take into account all of the
possible variables such as the audiences time zone differences, age and amount
of friends. It is instead based off the averages of the above variables.

In the first equation were it calculates the number of people the video, it does
this by getting the average friend size of our model (506 people) and using only
85% of these friends (taking into account the amount of people that wont see
the posts as they are not active. It is then multiplied by b which is the number of
people who have previously interacted with the video clip. For the first stage b
is equal to one because there is only one person who has shared it and this is the
student creator. As the number of people viewing the video clip increases the
number of people interacting with it also does. The number of people that
interact with the video clip is calculated by taking the total numeber of increased
views between stages and multiplying it by 0.048 (because this is our estimate of
the percentage of people who interact with videos).

Therefore using this equation, it models how much the views of the video
increases as the number of interactions increases. It takes seven stages of
sharing for it to reach over 73 million. The stages are calculations of exponential
growth as for example one person shares to 85% of their friends. Then fall of
those friends 85% of them will share to their friends. This creates exponetial
growth constent with the trend of a viral video. This equation is crucial to
helping us solve how a video will get more interactions on Facebook that gets it
exposed to more people that have the opportunity to view it, hence more views
on Youtube.

Team 1147
Implementing interaction rate with times and views:

















As stated in our model the video was posted online at 1800 on a Friday. Research
has shown that internet, hence Facebook and Youtube users, spend most of their
time on social media between 1500-2100 daily. The above graph shows when
the peak internet traffic times occur around the world in relationship to New
Zealand times. We picked the following countries to go on the graph in relation
to immigrants of our country and other countries that have same language and
culture.

Our student is a 17 year old which statistically means they will have 506 friends.
As they are a student we assume that 80% of their friends are within two years
of their age (405). 85% of these 506 friends (344) are likely to visit daily. The
other 20% of the students friends who arent a similar age to the student (18+)
are likely to go onto Facebook 31.4% of the time (31). If we add these two
components together we get the number of the students friends that will go on
Facebook in a day (436). In order to calculate how many of the students friends
we think will go on 1800-2100 we divide by 2 (to halve a twelve hour day) then
multiply by 0.65 to get the number of people that will visit Facebook between
1800-2100 (we estimated that there would be 15% more activity due to sleep
routines). So 122 of the students friends will go on Facebook between 1800-
2100.

Team 1147

The above graph shows peak internet usage time throughout a day.

344+31=375
375/2 = 187
197x0.65 = 122

Using the earlier formula we can calculate that 5 of the 122 people that view the
viral video will interact with the it in some way. This interaction will mean that
the video is shared onto the friends of friends newsfeed generating more
exposure and views. We continue our calculation including the factors of time,
number of friends and interaction rate.



Day 2:
We know the variables and we can input them into our equation.
(a) No. of friends = 510 (as the post becomes broader and broader more people
become involved so we need to use the wider age demographic statistic to give
us the best model).
(b) No. of people who have interacted on first day = 5
To find the number the of people that will see the post that day we multiply a by
0.314 (the percentage of 18+ year that go on Facebook daily. If we multiply this
by b (5) we will get the number of people who will see the post which we then
multiply by 0.0408 (which is our interaction rate as calculated previously). This
gives the number of people who interact on day 2.

a x 0.314 = 160.14
160.14 x 5 = 801
801 x 0.0408 = 32.66 round to 33

The number of views for day 2 is 801 (day 2 total) + 122 (day one total) = 923

Team 1147
We then continuly use these calculation to find out how many days it will take
for the video to spread throughout New Zealand and then internationally. We
know it will go overseas because peoples friends in New Zealand are very
diverse due to student exchanges and multicutural immigrants. It just takes one
person to have a friend in another country for that post to reach that country and
start spreading.

We calculated in the end that using our formula it would take eight days for a
viral video to reach 1% of the worlds population.

Conclusion:
We knew from the start that answering this question involved many complex
variables. We took the best representation we could by using statistics and
implementing this into a model.

We found out that in order for the video to go on its path to being seen by 1% of
the wrolds population it would most likely be through the function of social
media. We then used material that helped us find out peoples interactions with
media that passes it on to their friends and then views increase over time. We
could then use this model to help us find how it would be shared from the exact
time of day of posting using peak times which is when most people are on social
media. This growth became exponential and as it spread throughout New
Zealand it just took one of the friends from overseas to interact for it to enter a
new country on the viral stream.

So in the end wecalculated in the end that using our formula it would take eight
days for a viral video to reach 1% of the worlds population.

https://www.minimatters.com/youtube-best-video-length/
http://wistia.com/blog/does-length-matter-it-does-for-video-2k12-edition
http://www.bewebsmart.com/social-media/facebook/who-can-see-your-commentsand-likes/
https://www.facebook.com/help/327131014036297/
https://www.facebook.com/jimisworldd
https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/psIEN6gw9JA/TiLp_QNevBI/AAAAAAAANjQ/wxpKyfWcoxM/time-zone-summarychart_v2.JPG
http://qz.com/152818/online-tv-viewing-shows-how-traditional-broadcasters-getprime-time-wrong/
http://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/
http://www.cmee.co.nz/blog/new-zealand-facebook-statistics-q2-2014/
http://socialmedia.org.nz/2013/04/latest-nz-social-media-statistics/
http://www.marketinggum.com/facebook-statistics-for-new-zealand/
http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/18-24-year-olds-on-facebook-boast-anaverage-of-510-friends-28353/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/03/6-new-facts-about-facebook/