The Annoying Orange: The Most Popular Web Series In The World
Perhaps you haven't noticed it, but its true. In the first few months of 2010, the YouTube comedy sensation The Annoying Orange has rapidly become the most popular web series in the world.
In March 2006, California independent filmaker Dane Boedigheimer began posting comedy videos on YouTube. In December, he posted what became his first viral hit (now with over 6 million views) --"Screaming Eggs"-- a 60 second video featuring talking animated eggs with human features (and which had previously won film awards earlier that year).
After experimenting with similar videos featuring eggs, apples, pumpkins, etc., (in addition to other comedy vids), Dane posted his first "Annoying Orange" video on October 9, 2009. It was another viral hit (over 13 million views by now), and as subsequent Orange videos also took off, the separate RealAnnoyingOrange channel was created on January 11, 2010.
Since then, well, its been a meteoric rise for the mouthy (and, yes, annoying) Orange. For February 2010 views, the Annoying Orange smashed to a first place debut on the Mashable "Top 10 Most Watched Web Series" chart with an amazing 29 million views. And then it racked up 52 million hits (and another 1st place showing) for March 2010.
Without question, The Annoying Orange's sophomoric comedy is certainly annoying to many adults, but Dane has hit a sweet spot with the youth and teen markets, a success not seen since the equally-annoying-to-adults FRED broke out in 2008. The volume of views is phenomenal, and highlights the difference between the type of comedy "webseries" that draws huge views and those typically featured on sites like Tubefilter, whose one mention of the series called it "pure, pure unfunny highly concentrated, in droplet form."
What do you think? Funny? Annoying? A sign of the impending Mayan apocalypse?
Helpful Links
- Dane's original channel on youtube: Daneboe
- The Annoying Orange on youtube (realannoyingorange)
- HeyApple.com: The Annoying Orange Blog
- Nalts Interview with Dane, done via egg animation (2007) (reposted via a post on Nalt's blog in February 2010)
- March 2010 interview with Boedigheimer in a leading Romanian newspaper (Yes, Romania.) (via Google translate)
- YouTube Meets Daneboe and The Annoying Orange! (Jan 2010)(video from wickedawesomefilms featuring Dane and the Orange)
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Posts
Orange is evil
ReplyDeleteApplesauce!
ReplyDeleteNeither funny nor a sign of impending doom; I watched half an episode once and could stand no more.
ReplyDeleteI see how stuff like this is popular though. To each his own.
What was interesting was the seeming disconnect between youtubers and the web series community at the Streamys. In the comments there were a lot of cries for their own youtube award show".
ReplyDeleteThe youtubers brought in a huge audience but many in that audience questioned what these "web series shows" were and why they are relevant at an awards show they thought was going to honor youtubers. Yes, youtubers were given a seat at the table but clearly the youtube community was under the impression that the youtubers would be the focus of the Streamys.
Going forward that leads to a bit of marketing issue for the Streamys if they ever escape the vortex of death spiral.
Well, for starters the youtubers could learn a thing or two about the show before popping up and yelling for Smosh. A cursory examination of the categories informs all but the dim-witted to the nature of the award show.
ReplyDeleteTo analogize they basically showed up to watch the Emmys and got mad that the focus wasn't web series.
To a degree this depends on the tweets that were sent out by the Youtubers to invite their followers to watch the show. It is like going into a bar and shouting out the address of a party. Are people really going to check out what type of party they are attending or are they just going to show up. The fact that they were invited by Youtubers to a degree suggested it would be youtube centric and not web series centric.
ReplyDeleteThe Streamys basically "used" the Youtubers to attract a new "online" audience. That back fired because the audience they attracted was not interested in their content. Actions do have consequences and we saw all too well what those consequences were in terms of the Youtubers. They either want a larger role in the Streamys or they want their own awards show. Both seem like reasonable alternatives but the Streamys really needs to decide which direction they want to go if they are going to continue.
the wall street journal has now done a profile of the Orange:
ReplyDeletehttp://online.wsj.com/article
/SB10001424052748703404004575198410669579950.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_tech
this post is very usefull thx!
ReplyDelete