originally investigated and reported by Augustine Fou, with Tugce Esener @tesener
Chris Brown is successfully tapping into the viral halo of a funny video that coincidentally used his song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0
ReadWriteWeb article on how rights owners (Sony, Chris Brown) can make viral profits on other people using their work instead of suing them - http://bit.ly/KA3HI
The video was real. But promotional activities (possibly/likely paid) created the initial viral effect (led to the tipping point of the viral effect) which then got carried a further by people thinking they were simply late to the party, including myself (e.g. 440k bit.ly clicks and 3k detectable retweets out of the 13M views). The numbers don't jive.
The viral halo has added 1 million more views to the video from August 1 - August 2. (13.1 M to 14.5 M)
Ten ELEVEN TWELVE proof points to follow, each with screen shot to illustrate.
1. see the fine print in the YouTube description -- For more information or to make a donation towards violence prevention please visit our website: http://www.jkweddingdance.com/ -- why would a normal wedding video ask people to make a donation towards violence prevention? (see screen capture below), the WHOIS record shows the domain jkweddingdance.com was created 29-Jul-09 -- today is 31-Jul-09
Continue reading about the digital forensics used to detect this really good fake ...