Thanks to the rising popularity of internet video, BUSTED has now reached over 500,000 viewers! Three years after it’s release, our film is reaching more people than ever, and receiving very high ratings from internet audiences.
Here’s how we calculated it:
The authorized version available on Youtube.com has now generated over 83,000 viewings. But our biggest break occurred when the massive blog BoingBoing.net linked an unauthorized version available on Google Video. The Google Video version of BUSTED went viral, generating links on several major video sites and peaking at the rank of 18th out of all videos on Google.
Since Google Video doesn’t have a built-in counter, we’re forced to estimate the magnitude of our biggest success to date. For lack of a better method, I’ve extrapolated overall viewings by comparing the number of viewer ratings on Google (1575) with the number on Youtube (251).
(Note: since Youtube allows videos to appear in Myspace and other sites without offering a rating option, I subtracted the number of external Youtube viewings before computing)
Assuming 6 times as many people saw BUSTED on Google Video, we estimate total Google viewings at over 450,000!
Nonetheless, combining our Youtube viewings, our Google estimate, counts from smaller sites, screenings, and sales, we feel confident that BUSTED viewership easily exceeds 500,000 at this point.
We’re grateful to everyone who helped the film succeed and we hope you’ll continue helping us spread the word. We don't know how many people we have to reach in order to make consent searches a thing of the past, but I know we're not there yet. Every viewer is one less potential victim of police coercion and one more voice in the growing effort to inform all citizens of their 4th Amendment rights.
Feel free to share the Youtube version with your friends and family, but don’t forget about us. We’d never interfere with our most effective outreach venue yet, but it doesn’t exactly pay the bills.
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