Did You Know? It Will Blow Your Mind.

Today's Digg leader is a four minute, fifty-five second long YouTube video about interesting statistics that reflect a changing, globalized age. It doesn't sound like something that would be at the top of Digg; yet it is. The video is embedded below:



Here's why it works:

1) Excellent presentation: The video is nothing more than a vehicle to present certain statistics. Yes, the statistics are fascinating, but if they were presented as plain text in a relatively unexciting web page, Digg users would have passed right over it. The video is visually stimulating, giving the eye something to focus on every four or five seconds. It's also audibly stimulating, featuring a song that matches the theme of the presentation. Only because those two elements work together does the overall video work as well.

2) Fascinating information: Generally, as most scientists and math-based people are aware of, statistics are pointless, and can be twisted and distorted to convey almost any point the twister/distorter wishes to convey. However, this property of statistics makes them highly effective at evoking emotion, which masses of people will respond to. The statistics that the authors of the video used provoke a mind-boggling, somewhat-pessimistic/somewhat-optomistic emotion. Whatever the emotion was exactly, it worked well for Digg.