Project for Awesome Pwns YouTube

Last year, the vlogbrothers, along with many of their fans, completely blindsided YouTube and all of its visitors when we “took over” the Most Discussed list with the Project For Awesome. The idea was to have many, many nerdfighters (fans of the vlogbrothers) upload videos talking about their favorite charity. All of these videos would feature the same thumbnail image (an image I designed). We would then comment repeatedly on these videos and completely blanket the Most Discussed list on YouTube. Which we were successful in doing, except for one slot, which was held by a Mike Huckabee video.

This year, we opened up the project to everyone on YouTube, and told them all in advance. I even contacted George Stompolos (the head of the Partner Program) to get YouTube involved this year (which, after some emails between Hank and George, lead to Hank’s announcement video being front page featured).

With the help of more YouTubers (some new participants this year included LisaNova, OlgaKay, TylerOakley and others) we were able to completely take over the Most Discussed list, including every slot on the front page of Most Discussed (as seen below).

We had new challenges this year, including YouTube changing how the video thumbnails are selected just days before the project. To combat this, instead of making my own Project For Awesome video, I gave out my channel to a few non-partners so they could use my Thumbnail Upload option. ZeldaPhan and hopeonatenspeed both uploaded amazing Project For Awesome vids on my channel and I am personally donating $50 today to both of their charities.

The Project For Awesome will now be held annually on December 17th. If you’d like to participate next year, keep an eye out for the announcement video a few days before, or visit www.projectforawesome.com and sign-up for the mailing list.

One last note, this year, in addition to our activities on YouTube, John, Hank and myself went live for the first 40 hours of the project on blogTV. Without a minute off the air, the three of us were able to organize plans of attack from blogTV and I am convinced that without the addition of our non-stop blogTV broadcast, this year’s project would not have been as successful as it was.

Thank you to every nerdfighter, YouTuber, random viewer who left a comment, who joined us on blogTV and who made a video. I hope you gave what you could to the causes you found worthy, and I can’t wait to see this happen again next year.

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