Viral Success Quotes

Vine is where 'Don't' started popping off. A lot of famous Viners used the song, and that was crazy because I had never been a part of something like that. I drank champagne for the first time when it got 100,000 plays.

I joined MySpace in September 2003. At that time no one was on there at all. I felt like a loser while all the cool kids were at some other school. So I mass e-mailed between 30,000 and 50,000 people and told them to come over. Everybody joined overnight.

Psy is fantastic. He's shifted the planet. He's got the whole world dancing. And it's a rarity in this world. Only four people made that happen in history - James Brown, Michael Jackson, yours truly and Psy.

A lot of people were getting million-dollar deals from music I felt was trash, because their videos were going viral. I wanted to put out music that had soul, because that's what was missing.

On reflection, some things do super well because they hit with the time. Some things do super well because they are able to activate a kind of echo chamber or bandwagon or cascade - they didn't particularly hit with the time. Some things are just too astonishingly good to not hit the top. Those three explanations, with respect to the Star Wars phenomenon, seem to me all to pass the plausibility test, and to explore them, with respect to Star Wars, I think casts light not just on the saga of our time, but also on everything about our culture.

I went from having 50 listeners to 50 million listeners.

When I posted my first video, I remember it hit 700 views after a week, and I was like, 'Oh my God, this is amazing.' I was over the moon.

The key thing is to get that one splash - that one song or that one video for a song - that catches people's eyes. Because it's all digital content now.

My brother and me, we used to be like, 'We'll put this video out tonight, and if it did 1,000, it did good.'

I would go on the iTunes chart and see the hottest songs, then I'd cover them. People would go on YouTube and search for those songs. That's how I got my views. I'd post two or three songs a week.

When I first started, I wasn't trying to go viral. I just liked making funny videos, content that people would enjoy.

I first went on YouTube aged 15, and people were saying, 'Why not do this cover?' Then they wanted to hear my own stuff live, and it escalated from there. Selena Gomez's parents found my videos and manage me to this day.

When I got a million subscribers, it just sort of snowballed from there because a lot more people show interest. They're like, 'Who's this? They've got a million subscribers; maybe I'll like their channel.'

If you become a viral star, that is terrific!

'Sleepless' was the first thing that came out and really gained a lot of traction online.

'Flappy Bird' was one of those phenomena. If we could all build one now, we would. Probably a bunch of us are trying. Those kinds of games are interesting. Rumor has it he was making $50,000 a day just from advertising, which is great, especially given the cost of living in Vietnam.

There's a lot of people on Vine who don't really talk, but who are very big.

Sometimes when a video goes viral, it gets a ton of views very quickly: they'll get a couple of million within a few hours. All of my baking videos, even the more higher viewed ones, are like a slow burn. Right away they usually get 200,000 to 400,000 views, and then as they sit there for a few months, then they really explode.

It's very easy to make a viral video, but longevity and consistency, that's hard.

When you've got something really good, you don't have to force it on people. They will steal it!

To go from someone who would put something on SoundCloud and maybe get 15,000 plays in a year to getting 100,000 plays in one day felt very weird. I thought I was dying.

'Cleveland' went viral, but it didn't necessarily pop. I didn't have that support. I didn't have a deal when I made 'Cleveland' or anything like that.

TikTok helped me change my life. TikTok brought my song to several different audiences at once.

You no longer have to have a big record label behind you and have to kowtow to the politics that enabled you to get there. You can be a phenomenal artist and put your stuff out there on YouTube and find yourself becoming a star.

With 300 million people in America, you can fail to impress 299 million of them and still go platinum.