High figures reflects that this 2011 edition of the both horrific and beautiful day in the year flourished quite well.  The most interesting signal? Online gained massive ground this year. Perhaps a large segment of consumers choose for the safety of their home instead of the stampede for the a Xbox 360 package or of course an ipad 2.

We are going to zoom in on the online results. Want to see the figures? Read along!

Online

This year Black Friday boosted the online sales with 26 percent from $648 million to $ 816 billion which is an all time record. Massive as well since the increase from 2009 to 2010 was ‘just’+9 percent.

In total 50 million Americans made a visit on Black Friday related websites. This 35 percent more than previous year.

PayPal

When talking about online sales, you must acknowledge the importancy of PayPal. The digital wallet of millions of consumers worldwide briefly reviewed this online edition of Black Friday.  

Some interesting points:

• PayPal saw more people shop for deals from the comfort of their couches and mobile devices after Thanksgiving Day dinner. In the U.S., consumers shopped on mobile most frequently between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. PST on Thanksgiving.
• On Thanksgiving, consumers around the world shopped on mobile most frequently between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. PST.
• Thanksgiving 2011 resulted in a five-fold (511%) increase in global mobile payment volume compared to Thanksgiving 2010.
• There was a more than three-fold (350%) increase in the number of global customers shopping through PayPal mobile on Thanksgiving 2011 compared to last year.

Shoppers in these cities made the most mobile purchases through PayPal on Thanksgiving 2011:

1. New York
2. Houston
3. Los Angeles
4. Miami
5. Chicago

Cyber Monday

Today is a massive day as well since it is Cyber Monday. Comscore provided an overview of the results from last year:

As the table shows US consumers spent an average of $ 114.24 per buyer with an average total of 1.90 transactions per consumer. The top 5 of most visited retailers shows an interesting clash of the titans.

Comscore’s Chairman Gian Fulgoni commented on Comsore’s website about Cyber Monday

“We now turn our attention to Cyber Monday, a day that Shop.org says will see eight-in-ten retailers running special online promotions. Last year, Cyber Monday was the heaviest day of online spending ever, with sales exceeding $1 Billion, and we fully expect to see another record set this year.”

“Each of the top online retailers generated significantly greater Black Friday activity compared to last year,” added Mr. Fulgoni. “Amazon.com once again led the pack, with 50 percent more visitors than any other retailer, while also showing the highest growth rate versus last year. However, it is telling that the top multi-channel retailers also showed strong growth in visitors, demonstrating the importance of the online channel to the retail industry as a whole.”

Looking at below footage of this year’s Black Friday, we might see even higher figures for online next year.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The complete review of Comscore’s Cyber Monday 2010 can be found here. More intel about  Black Friday 2011 here.

This week’s Viral Friday #1 position goes to The Avenger Theatrical Trailer, kicking off with some serious action. The #2 goes to The Bug Circus Generator, because you don’t need electricity. And the #3 goes to Rethink Breast Cancer, we really want you to take a good look at this one, because it is quite important!

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

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1. The Avengers Theatrical Trailer

Click here to view the embedded video.

The long awaited movie The Avengers from Marvel  is finally coming! In May 2012, the best superhero team of our planet, gather around to rid the earth of evil. After the success of all individual team members, like Ironman, Thor and Captain America this movie must be a new blockbuster! You can see the heroes shine in this trailer, which already has 900,000 views since October 11!

2. Snapdragon Presents: The Bug Circus Generator

Click here to view the embedded video.

Praying Mantises, spiders, beetles, let’s just call them bugs! Bugs are all it takes to power a smartphone! At least if you have Qualcomm’s upcoming next generation Snapdragon S4 processor in there. The new  one is low power consuming, which is always good for the battery life. How low power consuming exactly? Go to the Facebook page and see how many praying mantises it takes to power a smartphone, computer or even an electric car! This video is  online since October 10^th and had  220.000 views! Don’t worry, no bugs were harmed in the process.

3. Rethink Breast Cancer presents: Your Man Reminder

Click here to view the embedded video.

After having some virals made for the male audience, here we have one especially for women! The subject is particularly important and to keep you focused, the message is spread by the men of your dreams. Here we have a video about breast cancer awareness by Rethink Breast Cancer. It gives simple, fast and secure word of advice on how to check your breast for unwanted signs. The best part is that you can download a free app which helps you remind to check it. The video is online since October 5^th and generated almost 300,000 views! Way too less!

4. Canal+: The Bear

Click here to view the embedded video.

This week BETC Euro RSCG Paris has released a commercial directed by Matthijs van Heijningen for French broadcaster Canal+ that combines comedy and stunning visuals. The spot aims to reinforce Canal+’s commitment to cinema, taking viewers behind the scenes on a film set which stars a rather surprising central character. So far more than 120.000 people have seen it since October 12.

5. New Müller ad 2011 – Wünderful Stuff

Click here to view the embedded video.

Remember the futuristic black car with pulsating red lights? What about your friendliest bear in the hood? Or that dastardly dog that laughs like – heh, heh, heh. Yes we mean Knight Rider car KITT, Yogi Bear and Wacky Racers Mutley. You might love this new ad from Müller. The brand launched their new ‘wünderful stuff’ slogan this year and combines it with popular cartoon characters. The video has been online since 10 October and has more than 154.000 views. Can’t get enough of those reminiscing cartoons from the past? Take a look here. Enjoy!

This week’s Viral Friday #1 position goes to Carlsberg Stunts With Bikers In Cinema, bringing couples in a nasty situation. The #2 goes to Puss In Boots – “The Cat Haz Swagger”, giving one of the most awesome Shrek caracters its own moment of fame. And the #3 goes to PlayStation 3 – Long Live Play  with a vague but appealing teaser which is surely one to watch.

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

Get our ViralBlog asset: the Viral Friday Widget! By default the widget shows you the latest Viral Friday, but it’ll also show you the seven most recent postings on ViralBlog.

Sponsored item

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1. Carlsberg Stunts With Bikers In Cinema

Click here to view the embedded video.

What a brilliant viral do we have here! Not only because the brand appeals to some of you, but also because you exactly know how the victims feel. It was so good that we gave it a post on its own on ViralBlog. What will you do if you are on a romantic date where you end up between 148 bikers? Manhood or take to one’s heels? A difficult dilemma where we want to see people struggle with it. Carlsberg arranged this for you in Belgium and you will enjoy it. The video is online since September 22 and it generated more than 3.2 million views. Cheers!

2. Puss In Boots – “The Cat Haz Swagger”

Click here to view the embedded video.

No this is not an Old Spice commercial. Remember the green ogre called Shrek and his furry animal friend Puss? Well, he is coming back to the big screen as the main protagonist and is voiced by Antonio Banderas. The movie has not even been launched yet but it already has 734.055 fans on Facebook. It has been online for over a week and has been viewed 1.417.000 times. Looks like it will be another million dollar cash cow for Dreamworks. Need more Puss in Boots? Take a look on their official website!

3. PlayStation 3 – Long Live Play

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ever since the PlayStation Network outage Sony has suffered huge damage to their PlayStation Brand. Sony is ready to make you all forget about that. They even started their new Long Live Play campaign a few weeks ago. Now Sony released a teaser with the same Long Live Play Slogan. The video was  uploaded 5 days ago but already has 1.765.000 views! To the untrained eye the teaser does not reveal much but the most loyal PlayStation fans should see references to Sony’s exclusive franchises. Our best bet is either a PlayStation Home or PlayStation Store make over. 

4. Introducing Timeline – A New Kind Of Profile

Click here to view the embedded video.

You probably heard about the F8 conference and Facebook’s new features. In this video Facebook introduces Timeline: a feature that follows your life, from your birth till now and in the future. It contains all your activities on Facebook but it will only show the most important moments. You can complete your timeline to by adding things from the past and update upcoming events. Are you going to complete your Timeline? More info can be found here. This video is online since September 22 and had more than 1,1 million views!

5. Time lapse Of Ford Explorer

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here we have a nice video for Lego addicts! On September 26^th there was a unique Ford Explorer rolling off the assembly line. The car was built from over 380,000 LEGO bricks and marks a beginning of a long-term relationship between Ford and LEGOLAND. The car will be a transported in a plexiglass trailer to LEGOLAND in Florida, where the children can acquire their first experience of driving. Since the movie is online, it already has over 500,000 views.

This week’s Viral Friday #1 position goes to the Kia Soul Hamster, a perfect combination of music, special effects and..hamsters! The #2 goes to Westfield Stratford and their 100 Years / Style / East London. And the 3rd position goes to the Foo Fighters – Hot Buns (uncensored) with a hilarious 18+ rated announcement!

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

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1. Kia Soul Hamster

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kia first introduced their dancing hamsters back in 2009. Now they are back. They show up in a video game where robots are at war. They roll up in their Kia Soul and start dancing. That the video has over million views in such a short time again shows that children and animals work good in viral videos. The video is online since

2. 100 Years / Style / East London

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are many ways to introduce your target audience with your new fantastic creation. But if you have a 22,000m2 large creation, you might want to pull off something as large as that in your promotion. In Stratford London (UK) a new shopping mall is arising. Instead of bombarding the people with info, the creators decided to share their impression of 100 years of style in East London. The result? An animating point of view with loads of different clothes-styles. The video is up since August 26^th and had more than 600,000 views!

3. Foo Fighters – Hot Buns (uncensored)

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video is rated for 18 years and older. After seeing this video we know why! The Foo Fighters give their  impression on what’s happening in the stop and go showers for truckers. It seems that they are preparing thoroughly for a special event. And a special event it is! This viral is an introduction to their new North America Tour! The Foo Fighters understood that having a shocking or compelling video works much better than a leaflet. The video is up since August  29^th and more than 283,000 views!

4. Jennifer Lopez – Just Another Day At The Office

Click here to view the embedded video.

When thinking about Jennifer Lopez in the first place you think about singing and dancing, but she is busy with other things also like perfumes, restaurant, and even a production company. The latest of her ventures include a clothing line called ‘Jennifer Lopez collection’, available at Kohls department stores. The video that she has made to promote this has gone viral with close to 250.000 views in only 3 days.

5. Anderson Silva ♥ Mega BK Stacker – BURGER KING

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here we have the undisputed number 1 for this week, lowered down to the last position. Reason? At the moment of writing, this viral has an issue with copyrights on the music. All that’s left is a silent video. Burger King created a very funny way to make a tribute to one of their success-stories, the Mega Burger Stacker. Too bad the music is deleted, because we can assure you, it was a watertight connection.  The video is up since August 24^th and had more than 1.5 million views! Want to find out which song was used? The Chinese still have it.

This weeks Viral Friday #1 position goes to New iPhone Commercial. Adam Thinks made this fake iPhone commercial and he’s actually doing a great job imitating the actual iPhone commercials. The runner up spot is for Jay-Z Rhapsody Commercial. Rapper and music mogul Jay-Z teamed up with online music provider Rhapsody to announce the release of his new album. Nokia’s N900 completes this week’s top 3. The iPhone made the touch screen mobile populair, Google quickly followed and so it was only a matter of time before the large names in the mobile phone industry would follow their lead.

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

Get our ViralBlog asset: the Viral Friday Widget! By default the widget shows you the latest Viral Friday, but it’ll also show you the seven most recent postings on ViralBlog.

1. New iPhone Commercial

Adam Thinks made this fake iPhone commercial and he’s actually doing a great job imitating the actual iPhone commercials. This video shows that there really is an app for absolutely everything now. This commercials features different applications for stalking your ex-girlfriend. The video became extremely popular since Adam Thinks posted it on Youtube August 21th 2009 and it has already reached more than 500,000 views and more than 700 comments on YouTube. If you want to see other commercial parodies from Adam Think check some out here.

2. Jay-Z Rhapsody Commercial

Rapper and music mogul Jay-Z teamed up with online music provider Rhapsody to announce the release of his new album. The fans were granted a little preview with this viral. Until now the viral has rendered 336,614 views already. The video shows Jay-Z changing into the outfits he wore on the covers of his previous albums. The campaign was developed by Droga5 New York.

3. Nokia N900

The iPhone made the touch screen mobile popular, Google quickly followed and so it was only a matter of time before the large names in the mobile phone industry would follow their lead. And here it is: the Nokia N900. Just like Google’s Android system it runs on open source software, which is Linux. The video which has attracted nearly half a million views so far gives the viewer a first impression of the phone’s capabilities. With over 700 votes and an average rating of 5 stars it looks like Nokia is back in the race!

4. Visual Effects: 100 Years Of Special Effects

The video ‘Visual Effects: 100 Years Of Special Effects’ takes you on a journey through the most amazing and remarkable special effects of the past 100 years. From ‘The Great Train Robbery’ in 1903 to ‘The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button’ in 2008. We wrote about it earlier, but he videos was originally intended as an introduction to a classroom lecture for 5th graders and was placed on YouTube by Bengraphics. Now, the video got over 716,000 views and is much discussed in blogs. And for the music lovers: the song is ‘Rods and Cones’ by Blue Man Group

5. Radiolab: 16 Moments

Radiolab is a radio program broadcast on public radio stations in the United States. Recently the hosts, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, made a one hour show titled “Moments of Death”. In a respons filmmaker Will Hoffman went out in search of moments of life. The above is what he found. The video got over 300,000 views in three weeks.

This weeks Viral Friday #1 position goes to The X Factor 2009 – Danyl Johnson. The English X Factor keeps being a talent generator. We have seen Susan Boyle, Paul Pots, Connie Talbot and Shaheen Jafargholi. And now there is Danyl Johnson. The runner up spot is for Lego Stop Motion Tribute To The 80′s. Retro is hot and so are stop motion videos. Swedish duo Rymdreglage combines the two in their video ’8 Bit trip’. Nokia Booklet 3G First Video completes this week’s top 3. Nokia rocked the world this week by introducing a video for a brand new breed of portable devices, called the Booklet 3G.

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

Get our ViralBlog asset: the Viral Friday Widget! By default the widget shows you the latest Viral Friday, but it’ll also show you the seven most recent postings on ViralBlog.

1. The X Factor 2009 – Danyl Johnson

The English X Factor keeps being a talent generator. We have seen Susan Boyle, Paul Pots, Connie Talbot and Shaheen Jafargholi. And now there is Danyl Johnson. A 27-year old teacher with passion for singing and has made a amazing first audition at the show.

A real “show-stopper” of an audition on the song from The Beatles – With A Little Help From My Friends. The never shy Simon Cowell is very positive this time. “Danyl, I’ve been doing this for eight, nine years, and that was single handedly the best first audition I’ve ever heard,” says Simon.

2. Lego Stop Motion Tribute To The 80′s

Retro is hot and so are stop motion videos. Swedish duo Rymdreglage combines the two in their video ’8 Bit trip’. The video is a tribute to all your favorite games of the 80′s: Tetris, Mario, PacMan and they’re all compiled of Lego! The music in the video is by Daniel Larsson and the animation was done by Tomas Redigh, the two members of Rumdreglage, who spend 1,500 hours in creating this amazing video.

Tomas Redigh spend December 2008 to July 2009 in his studio moving Lego bricks around and taking pictures. It seems like all the effort the duo put in is already paying off. They placed the video online just 5 days ago and already got over 1.7 million views. Apparently, the duo wasn’t expecting this sudden abundance of attention. Their official website couldn’t handle the traffic and now reads: ‘Well after five years you people out there found us, at last, and start to visit this page. This site was obviously not made for that and reached the maximum limit of bit flow in one hour or something’.

3. Nokia Booklet 3G First Video

Nokia rocked the world this week by introducing a video for a brand new breed of portable devices, called the Booklet 3G. The video was picked up worldwide immediately by som influential blogs like Engadget, GSMArena.co and Sputnik, which already has resulted in a half million views and over 20 duplicate videos.
A long awaited introduction of Nokia in the world of netbooks. With the rising and fierce competition on the mobile market Nokia has chosen a widening of their productrange with this Nokia Booklet 3G.

4. Transforming Camaro

Michael Bay, renowned for movies full of explosions and the filming of the animation series Transformers keeps people imagining, robots that transform into a car and vice versa. Who does not want to have or do that?

A Mexican car-dealership jumped on the bandwagon, made use of the situation and put Bumblebee on-stage. It happens more often, mostly, men walk around in (weird) costumes from movies, but this costume can really transform into a Chevy Camaro.

Whether this has actually helped the car dealer remains unknown. The movie itself is already quite successful and has been viewed over 500,000 times.

5. Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc

Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc. released a brilliant weird video this week featuring the Scratch Perverts, a collective of turntablist DJs from the UK. In the video the DJ’s use scratch tables and instruments with human heads attached to it. You should definitely visit the Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc. website for some nice production stills.

This weeks Viral Friday #1 position goes to Stanislav On Hyves. Last week the Dutch Ministry of Justice launched a campaign to raise awareness around the privacy on the internet topic. The runner up spot is for Do You Wanna Date My Avatar. The Guild is an award-winning online sitcom about the lives of an online guild “The Knights of Good”, and now the made a music video. COW Taster 001 completes this week’s top 3. COW Taster 001 is a pretty shocking video with images from girls who get into a severe car-accident.

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

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1. Stanislav On Hyves

Last week the Dutch Ministry of Justice launched a campaign to raise awareness around the privacy on the internet topic. The campaign aired on Holland’s largest social network Hyves where visitors were confronted with Stanislav and his gang of cybercrooks. Information from ones personal profile was used in the video to show just how much Stanislav knows about you. By now the campaign is offline again: in one week time the campaign reached 7 million people and got over 3 million views. According to the spokesman of the Ministry of Justice the target audience was reached.
The campaign caused a large discussion on the privacy topic, because the campaign itself used information from Hyves profiles that was set to private. The campaign was made by Dutch advertising agecy N=5, their digital department Kong and technical realisation was done by Amsterdam based Refunk.

2. Do You Wanna Date My Avatar

The Guild is an award-winning online sitcom about the lives of an online guild “The Knights of Good”, with each webisode 3–7 minutes long. The first episode was posted July 27, 2007. The show is sponsored by Microsoft and rolled out earlier this year for HD download on Xbox Live, as well as for download on the Zune Marketplace and streaming on MSN Video. On August 17 The Guild launched their music video ‘Do You Wanna Date My Avatar’, which got over 1.6 million views since.
More information on The Guild on their MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts.

3. COW Taster 001

COW Taster 001 is a pretty shocking video with images from girls who get into a severe car-accident. The British Transport Research, Consultancy & Testing recently performed a research on the driver distraction from in-vehicle sources which also showed messaging while driving is dangerous and significantly raises reaction times, even compared with driving at UK legal limit for alcohol consumption. The video shows what can happen. In fact the video is part of a campaign from the Gwent Police. The videos have characters drawn from real emergency services experience, from the initial crash to the tough job of talking to the deceased relatives, and dealing with a communities mourning, anger and confusion.

4. Obama Girl Dies

Obama Girl, normally known as Amber Lee Etting and most known from her song Crush on Obama has cheated death. But since few can cheat death Obama Girl Dies. The video shows Amber filming a new song for Obama, but an unfortunate fluke leads to her death. The video is actually part of a campaign for the movie Final Destination created by Indy Mogul where Derek D (supposedly another internet celebrity) dies an unfortunate death in his Ferrari.

5. Performance

This hilarious music clip of ‘MC SpandX’ of Ride Moore Records (supposedly the self-created label from Robin Moore) resulted in more than 500,000 views this week. In the video MC SpandX raps about his aversion to bike messengers and ‘hipsters’. ‘It’s all about Performance, that’s the name of the game, I pump up my tires and I oil my chain’. Even professional cyclist Lance Armstrong tweeted about it.

This weeks Viral Friday #1 position goes to Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt. The Acrobuttocks have done it! With their gymnastic laptop throwing and butt-catching skills they have made it to the top in this week’s Viral Friday. The runner up spot is for What Drugs Not To Take While Driving. German comedian Michael Kessler offers guidance in the No-Go’s of daily life in his comedy show ‘Kesslers Knigge’, real handy! Ozzy Osbourne Meets the New Samsung Solstice Cell Phone completes this week’s top 3. Samsung Mobile USA hired rock star Ozzy Osbourne to play a role in their online video to promote their new Solstice phone.

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

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1. Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt

The Acrobuttocks have done it! With their gymnastic laptop throwing and butt-catching skills they have made it to the top in this week’s Viral Friday. As we reported before MSI has created a great viral.
With ViralTracker we were able to track the video and see it grow from 400,000 views on 13 August to over 940,000 views today and it keeps on growing.

Interesting to see are the discussions going on whether the video is real or not. The combination of humor and video-editing skills have made it a video with a great uptake in just a couple of days.
A Google Blogsearch learns us the video has been posted or written about at least 19,000 times, and a Bing search reveals 101,000 hits. All in all a successful viral.

2. What Drugs Not To Take While Driving

German comedian Michael Kessler offers guidance in the No-Go’s of daily life in his comedy show ‘Kesslers Knigge’. By means of short sketches, Michael explains what 10 things not to do when breaking up with your girlfriend, at the luggae belt, or in the cinema. In ’10 Drogen – beim Autofahren’, the comedian illustrates which drugs not to take while driving.

The video got over 620,000 views on YouTube and 2,100 ratings. The video is mainly popular in Germany, but is spreading further online.

3. Ozzy Osbourne Meets The Samsung Solstice

Samsung Mobile USA hired rock star Ozzy Osbourne to play a role in their online video. The objective is to raise awareness for the new Samsung Solstice Cell Phone.
In this video, Ozzy is being asked to join a new band, but with who exactly? See for yourselves! Check out also the Samsung Mobile USA YouTube channel and the Samsung Mobile Facebook Channel.

4. Johnny Walker’s Walk

Johnny Walker released this brilliant five-minute-plus spot, developed by BBH London. In the video famous actor Robert Carlyle narrates, in a single continuous take, the progression of Johnnie Walker whiskey from the backroom experimentation of a humble shopkeeper to the multinational powerhouse it is today. The combination of bagpiper abuse, well-timed visual cues, pitch-perfect writing and music, makes this a strong video.
Although Johnny Walker wants us to ‘Keep Walking’, we can’t help wondering what Mr. Walker might also have thought about the current plans to close one of his descendants’ plants, though…

5. ABSOLUT Differently

ABSOLUT Vodka launched their new commercial ‘Anthem’, for which the brand teamed up with six artists. The artists came together at different locations around the world, to share their visions on an ABSOLUT world and spell out the brand’s philosophy of ‘Doing things differently leads to something exceptional.’

By means of large installations the message is spelled out in ice blocks, flying lanterns, balloons, wheat and glass. The video was created by TBWA\CHIAT\DAY New York. First, the 30 and 60 second spots broadcast in the US and other markets will follow during the autumn, winter and spring.

The commercial was launched two weeks ago and awaited with much anticipation. Now, the opinions vary and the video is much discussed online. Some like it, some don’t, but the on YouTube the commercial got over 40,000 views, which isn’t bad for a television commercial.

This weeks Viral Friday #1 position goes to Moon in Google Earth. Last Monday Google celebrated the 40th anniversary of the moon landing by introducing their new, interactive version of Moon in Google Earth. The runner up spot is for Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. A very beautiful and inspiring movie caught the attention and hearts so many this week: a single shot video of the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. Today Was a Good Day completes this week’s top 3. To celebrate Paul Rodriguez’s signature skate shoe hitting its 3rd generation Nike SB has put together this special commercial titled ‘Today Was a Good Day’.

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

Get our ViralBlog asset: the Viral Friday Widget! By default the widget shows you the latest Viral Friday, but it’ll also show you the seven most recent postings on ViralBlog.

1. Moon In Google Earth

On July 20 1969 Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and spoke the now famous words ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’. Last Monday Google celebrated the 40th anniversary of the moon landing by introducing their new, interactive version of Moon in Google Earth. With Google Earth 5.0 you can take tours of landing sites, narrated by Apollo astronauts, views 3D models of landed spacecraft, zoom into 360-degree photos to see astronauts’ footprints and watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions. Besides this virtual tour Google Earth provides information on manned and unmanned moon missions and unique material of all American, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Indian missions. The video Google made to promote Moon In Google Earth is a huge success with over 1 million views on YouTube and many blogs and news sites wrote about the video.

2. Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

A very beautiful and inspiring movie caught the attention and hearts so many this week: a single shot video of the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. Its serenity and the overwhelming views of the whale sharks, manta rays and many other fishes. The aquarium is the second largest aquarium of the world and has Georgia Aquarium as the leading aquarium.
The aquarium mimics the Japanes Kuroshio-current, the Black Tide and is with 7,500 cubic-meters and 7.5 million liters of oceanic water not a small aquarium to put it mildly. Words are too much for this movie which has been watched over 1 million times on YouTube and Vimeo. Click and enjoy.

3. Nike SB: Today Was A Good Day

Nike produces skateboard gear under their SB label, including shoes. One of these shoe models is called P-Rod, named after Mexican-American professional skateboarder Paul Rodriguez (a rider for the Nike team). To celebrate Paul Rodriguez’s signature skate shoe hitting its 3rd generation Nike SB has put together this special commercial titled ‘Today Was a Good Day’. The video, with music from Ice Cube (his ’93 track ‘Today Was A Good Day’), shows what P-Rod feels an ideal LA day would play out. Read more on skate videos in this ViralBlog posting.

4. Snoop Dogg’s Smoking Closet

Snoop Dogg launched the viral video ‘Snoop Dogg’s Smoking Closet’ in order to promote his European ‘Blazed and Confused’ tour. The video is a spoof on Heineken’s Walk In Fridge and shows the rapper and his friends Verne Troyer, A.K.A. MiniMe, and Stephen Marley, as well Slightly Stoopid and Mickey Avalon, who join Snoop on his tour. We already wrote about the video on ViralBlog and it keeps on generating views: over 185,000 on Funny or Die and YouTube!

5. Bruno Gets Bruno’ed

Bruno, Sasha Baron Cohen’s latest alter ego, got Bruno’ed on the premiere of his own movie Bruno, when an imposter treated the waiting fans on a promo of the South African restaurant chain Nando’s and her PERi-PERi chili-sauce. The look-alike arrived with a whole entourage and parked in front of the theater in a Hummer and entertained the audience for 10 minutes when security realized this wasn’t the real Bruno and pulled him off-stage. Bruno was not-amused, but stole the show with his own entry on a horse and small army of scantily clad men and women.
The whole campaign of and around Bruno is very wide with a Meinspace, Twitter, Facebook, Digg Dialogg, Dildo Defender Game and uBeats.

This weeks Viral Friday #1 position goes to United Breaks Guitars. Dave Carroll is the singer in a band. In the spring of 2008 they traveled with United Airlines. They broke his guitar and refuse to pay for it, so Dave wrote a song about his experience. The runner up spot is for Office 2010: The Movie. A movie about Office 2010? Yes, packed with action and at moments even funny! Bleeding Billboard completes this week’s top 3. The local governments of Franklin District Council and Papakura District Council in New Zealand have taken remarkable precautions in order to decrease fatal car accidents.

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

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1. United Breaks Guitars

Dave Carroll is the singer in a band called Sons Of Maxwell (listen to their songs on their YouTube channel). In the spring of 2008 the band traveled to Nebraska with United Airlines. A lot happened that trip, read it all on Dave’s blog. In short: Dave brought a very expensive Taylor guitar that experienced rough handling by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago, resulting in severe damage to the guitar. United refused to pay for the damage, so Dave decided to write a song about his experience with United. And so he did. His song got viewed almost 3.2 million times on YouTube in 11 days and 15,486 viewers left a comment. Now United experiences the force of social media. I bet United will feel this.

2. Office 2010: The Movie

Microsoft is buzzing a lot lately. Windows 7 buzz, Project Natal, laptop hunters and now the Office 2010 including an exciting teaser and trailer video. The teaser and trailer seem to be made for a new movie with a lot of action and on some moments are quite funny.
Old veteran Clippy is no longer and now the battle has begun to track and trace a hacker who has released a new font on the internet. An entertaining trailer and afterward people can visit the site.

Big news about Office 2010 are the Office Web applications, lighter versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel which will compete with Google Docs.

3. Bleeding Billboard

The local governments of Franklin District Council and Papakura District Council in New Zealand have taken remarkable precautions in order to decrease fatal car accidents. The first heavy rains after summer, bring the highest death toll on New Zealand roads. In order to lower the road toll they placed a bleeding billboard. The billboard features a young boy whose eyes, nose and ears bleed when it rains. And the message reads: “Rain changes everything. Drive to the conditions”.

The Bleeding Billboard was developed by Colenso BBDO and was awarded with a Bronze Design Lion at Cannes International Advertising Festival. Local, national and even international media picked up the story, driving awareness for weather conditions and driving habits. Online the video generated almost 1 million YouTube views. As a result, the district of Papakura faced zero death tolls.

4. The PEN Story

Mireille already wrote about it: the PEN story. For the 50th anniversary of the PEN cameras, Olympus created a stop motion video. They shot 60,000 pictures, developed 9,600 of them and then reshot 1,800 pics. And there was no post production.

Within two weeks the video generated over 670,000 views on YouTube and judging by the comments The PEN Story is highly appreciated by the viewers. As well as the song that accompanies the video. Next to the video, NEUE DIGITALE GmbH, created a website for the PEN story, where you can also download the song by Johannes Stankowski.

5. O.M.G.I.G.P: Internet Explorer 8

Not everything went as planned this week for Microsoft. Their recently launched “Browse Better” campaign, to promote Internet Explorer 8, showcased 4 different movies with Dean Cain called “Special Internet Service Announcements”. One movie however was too much according to many: the movie shows a woman vomiting when she uses her husband’s laptop. The reactions were mixed, but many thought it was too much. Microsoft was forced to pull the movie. However, this movie responsible for 57% of all views of the complete campaign and nearly 60% of comments are related to this movie. With over 800,000 views this is the most successful movie of the Browse Better campaign. Who knows, perhaps Microsoft actually did plan it this way. It is a viral success.