Kony 2012: The most viral video in history

Invisible Children wanted to make Joseph Kony’s name known around the world. Well the organisation has succeeded. The 30-minute documentary “Kony 2012” is now the most viral video in history according to analytics platform, Visible Measures.

Hitting more than 100-million views in six days across the web, the documentary about the Ugandan warlord and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader is the most discussed topic on the web.

In its report, Visible Measures found that Kony surpassed other record-setting “viral legends” such as Susan Boyle and the Old Spice Guy.

Visible Measures created a chart to outline the time it took for the video to hit 100-million views compared to other videos that have hit the milestone.

The analytics platform got its stats by not only tracking the original Vimeo video of Kony 2012, but also responses to the video.

We measure online video based on True Reach, the combined performance of clips related to a “campaign”. This provides a holistic and complete view of a campaign’s performance online. In the instance of the Kony campaign, the main clip has 74 million views on YouTube. The additional 38-million views come from the 750+ clips uploaded by audiences across the web. In other words, if you just look at the main clip on YouTube, you’re missing tens of millions of views for the campaign.

Despite its incredible popularity, Kony 2012, as well as the organisation behind it have faced some criticism since going live. Many critics have questioned whether or not the social media campaign is doing more harm than good.