It's good to see Vodafone (albeit NZ only) embracing the power of viral video with this fabulous 'Symphonia' video, made using the sound of text messages being sent to 1,000 phones:



So I've decided to do a little top 5 of my favourite videos in this spirit, as they're one of my favourite in the viral video family. The ones that are real are the best, as they hit the "How did they do that?!?!?!?" trigger as people imagine how many hundreds of hours and planning went into the video. Either way, making music in an unexpected way is hugely viral, the bigger and more complicated the better.


No. 5 - Is it real? Isn't it? Debate over this helped push 'Bike Hero' to over 2 million views.



The original and my personal favourite, DJ Scotch Egg performing Bach with a Gameboy orchestra, loses points only because it looks too fake, but I'm a child of the 80's and this hits my 8-bit pleasure button:



No. 3 The Vodafone video must have been inspired by the success of AKQA's 'Happy Christmas' message last year, which is fine - viral video is allll about creative recycling. Jingle Bells remixed:




No.2 - a real pleasure to listen to, if stressful, I love this music made from Windows 98 and XP sounds only and with over 5 million views I can't be the only one:




Number 1: This goes straight to the top for being too clever and uber cool. Radiohead's 'Nude' - cover version wtih redundant hardware.



Runners up:

It's only a week old, by I like what these guys have done with their Stylophone beatboxes:



What do you think? Any I've missed? Please comment and send me links to any you think should be on there!

With a target audience of about 4 people, this particular one isn't going to go viral but wow! What a fantastic idea. As soon as I have a spare hour I'm going to be making lots of these:

So now I understand the hype behind JibJab, after all this has had 3 million views!