The race to acquire more followers on twitter or more fans on Facebook Pages, seems to have taken off in a serious way among celebs and now even amongst portals.
Youtube in a blog post has challenged that its Facebook page in 60 days time would garner more fans than even Will Smith, Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Vin Diesel, Adam Sandler. It also re-iterates if it fails to do so it would spotlight their choosen nonprofit or non-commercial cause videos on its homepage.
Such sort of messages from celebs may have been deemed publicity stunt at first sight but coming from a Online giant that too a part of Google seems to have changed the angle. The message was posted by Hunter Walk, YouTube’s Director of Product Management and in no way seems to be a prank but extreme desire to create buzz .
What does Blog Post say ?
OK, Ashton might have more followers on Twitter than we do, but we’re not going quietly into the night. Let’s take a friendly celebrity tussle to Facebook, shall we? With 3.1 million fans, we’re hovering above Mr. Demi Moore, Rihanna and, er, potato chips (Pringles). That’s not too bad, but our sights are on you, Will Smith, Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Adam Sandler and Vin Diesel. You stand in our way of leaderboard glory so it’s time for a good old fashioned Internet showdown.
we’re going to pass these celebs in the next 60 days and if we don’t, we’ll eat humble pie and spotlight video(s) on our homepage for the nonprofit or non-commercial cause of their choosing.
The post even request its users to join Youtube on facebook so as to achieve their distanced target. Although it needs to be seen how far they become successful in this stint as the message was published only on blog and corporate blogs do not attract that many eyeballs. Youtube currently has 3.1 million facebook fans and was adding some 2.5-5k fans daily but the numbers seems to have picked up after the challenge.
Since when Youtube started trying attention-seeking tricks?
Youtube certainly hopes that giving such challenges to celebs may help it to garner more media attention at the same time helps it to become a cooler quotient for Young Audiences. The attention seeking plans could be evident by looking at its facebook page stats which paints a gloomier picture for its challenge. Ashton Kutcher’s- Twitter drama certainly created a lot of buzz at the same time generated a huge publicity for Twitter. The only hope for Youtube to make this ploy effective is to get counter-challenge from those celebrities.
The funny thing here is that the the turf for fan-following battle is fought on Facebook’s ground, which is a serious threat to many of Google’s initiative, Instead the company should have gone for such media-seeking attention at its own turf maybe a google friend connect??
