Gotye's Growing Popularity in 2012

This time last year, you may not have heard about Belgian-Australian singer-songwriter Gotye, but now his work seems inescapable for many. In particular the song, "Somebody That I Used to Know" has become a global hit, the official video has over 175 million views and currently sits at the #1 spot on YouTube's music chart.

That original video first hit the web in July of 2011, but the clip drew an impressive, though relatively modest 30 million views (nearly half in December) with many of the interest coming from Germany, Australia, and the Netherlands.

In 2012, the video has averaged over 35 million views per month and has become incredibly popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Poland. In addition to obvious increases in radio airplay, part of the YouTube popularity stems from a very viral cover from January by the band "Walk Off the Earth" that features five performers using one guitar; it's been seen 94 million times. This month, a cover on Glee and The Voice have also stirred up new buzz.

"Gotye" is one of 2012's top rising searches, and so for a better picture of how popularity has changed over time, below you can see the relative weekly search interest for "Gotye."

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'A Dramatic Surprise' Is April's Surprise Hit

At 24 million views, the creative TNT promotion is the most-viewed, non-music video of the past month. The spectacle, which was staged in Belgium to announce the channel's arrival, has now become popular around the world, and remains a most-viewed video today in numerous countries including South Korea, UAE, Sweden, South Africa, and the United States, among others.

The video was posted just last Wednesday and hit its peak on Thursday, drawing 6.6 million views that day alone.



Interestingly, the clip comes to us from Belgium where, you might remember, Carlsberg also staged a funny marketing stunt last fall. That clip, which depicted a theater of biker's intimidating movie goers, drew over 10 million views.

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On the Scene: Storms in the Oklahoma

While the damage across the Midwest was not quite as bad as originally thought, there were six tornado-related deaths this weekend in Oklahoma. Over 800 videos (of varying types) were posted over the weekend with the keyword "tornado."

You can view a collection below from CitizenTube:

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Nyan Cat Celebrates One Year Anniversary

One year and 70 million views later, the Nyan Cat celebrates it's YouTube birthday today. The backstory is easy enough to explain: animated gif plus Japanese pop tune equals weird looped animation. What happened after is anything but.

Defying the logic of many, the clip went on to become one of YouTube's top 10 most-viewed videos of 2011 and spawned seemingly countless parodies, remixes, and covers. There is a 100 hour version now. With 6 million views.

Interestingly, while the video did see an initial spike in interest in April of 2011, it was not as large as some of the other well known viral hits. Instead, a look at the data shows that the clip has maintained a fairly steady following, averaging around 1 million views per week over the past year.



In the neighborhood of 100,000 videos have been posted with "nyan" in the title over the past year. And those videos have been seen over 400 million times. 400 million. Nearly half a billion.

Here are the top 10 most popular:

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