FREAKquel: The Bouncing Poodle

You people may be more powerful than you know, at least in terms of viral web behavior.

A couple weeks ago, I posted here about a funny video on YouTube that shows a large white poodle bouncing (or “stotting,” as I was informed by a commenter) through Washington Square Park in NYC. The poodle is owned, and being walked, by my cousin Barbara.

At that time, the video had been viewed about 300 or 400 times on YouTube. Soon after, it became a “featured” video on YouTube’s homepage and, as of this writing, has been viewed more than 300,000 times.

How did this happen? I don’t know the first thing about the algorithms YouTube uses to bump a video up to a featured page, but I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that a short, intense burst of viewing activity from a few thousand Freakonomics.com readers tripped the YouTube switch, propelling Moishe the bouncing dog into the video stratosphere. Plainly, this poodle is anything but standard.