Did you watch that footage of the Russian meteor that crashed down on Friday and injured about a thousand people? So did I. So did everybody. In fact, more people watched that video in its first five days on the Internet than any video ever before.
Footage of the meteor being hosted on video-sharing sites like YouTube and Dailymotion eclipsed 100 million views on Tuesday, meaning that an average of 20 million people watched the meteor crashing every day since it struck land five days ago.
RussiaToday is the channel laying claim to the most popular clip. Its 1:24 account of the meteor has been seen more than 26 million times.
According to online measurement company Visible Measures, the Russian meteor is now the fastest video event to ever eclipse the 100 million mark, beating out Felix Baumgartner’s October space jump by a matter of hours. Prior to that, last March’s “Kony 2012” mini-movie held the mark after crossing over the 100 million views threshold in six days.
“But the meteor had something those campaigns didn’t,” Visible Measures told The New York Times of the massive collection of space debris, considered the largest known celestial body to enter into the Earth’s atmosphere in more than 100 years. “We all had to watch it, in shock, awe, and terror.”
It also had the benefit of the Russian people’s propensity for automobile dashboard cameras, which Russians apparently use quite liberally in an effort to maintain evidence should they get in an accident and have to go to court.
Or, you know, in case a meteor blasts through the Earth’s atmosphere and starts flashing wicked bright lights all around the Siberian sky.
Photo via Alex Shifrin/Twitter
