I have a dream – of a Sibel Edmonds viral YouTube video

As the title states, I have a dream. I would like to see a YouTube video about Sibel Edmonds’ story become extremely popular and watched. While I don’t currently have the skills to produce a video, much less a viral video, I do have some thoughts and suggestions on what such a video might look like and contain. I also have some ideas about how it could have a better chance of making it into the most watched, commented, emailed, etc. lists.

The important factor to recognise is that according to a TechCrunch article published a few months back The first 48 hours in the life of a new video are crucial to its success or failure- “Each video has a shelf life of 48 hours before it’s moved from the Daily Most Viewed list to the Weekly Most Viewed list, so it’s important that this [getting the 50K views needed to put a YouTube video on the most viewed list]happens quickly.”

So, I think advanced planning is needed in order to achieve what I believe is a worthwhile goal. Emails and forum posts in advance of the release of such a video in places such as DKos, DU, BradBlog, Huffington post, Luke Ryland’s blog, sympathetic forums, etc. would enable a sizeable audience to prepare to watch and spread (only if they liked it and wanted to help, of course) such a video. The video and posts about the video would ideally have share buttons associated with them- thus gaining more exposure for the video and posts about it on sites such as digg, stumbleupon, reddit, newsvine, etc.

Now, let’s consider what might be ideas for the actual content of the video.

We have a lot of back story news coverage- both print and video. Within that is a lot of footage of Sibel Edmonds telling various parts of her story at different times- skirting the gag order to do so. It’s important not to have the video pulled due to copyright violations, but fair use should allow for short quotes/exerpts/screenshots etc. We also have some great researchers/writers to draw from who have done a lot of coverage and legwork on the progress of the story over a several year period. Hat tips to Luke Ryland and Brad Friedman in particular.

We also would want to include recent news developments- such as the worldwide coverage of the Sibel Edmonds’ story which resulted from the recent London’s Sunday Times article.

Finally, there is Sibel Edmond’s State Secrets Privilege photo gallery. Names have been put with faces by Luke Ryland on his blog.

 More back story material not included above might be found at Just a Citizen, Sibel Edmonds’ official site.

Now, if someone can’t create a YouTube video worthy of buzzing and promoting given all of that, we are indeed in a lot of trouble.