Above: A homemade video by Zewdy, a talented young artist
from New York City is garnering growing attention on YouTube.

Tadias Magazine
Arts & Entertainment News

Published: Friday, January 8, 2010

New York (Tadias) – We recently received several emails directing our attention to a music video by a multicultural artist named Zewdy, born in New York City and of Ethiopian and Eritrean heritage.

Partly owing to the young lady’s savvy use of social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, the homemade clip is fast becoming an online sensation. In a sign consistent with viral videos on YouTube, Zewdi has already received over 15, 000 hits in a span of only six days.

“This is the great promise of YouTube: Your video can soar in popularity through sheer word-of mouth—or rather, click-of-mouth—until eventually people are making T-shirts about it,” writes Chris Wilson, who tracked the traffic trends of more than 10,000 YouTube videos for an investigative article published on Slate Magazine. “I crunched the numbers to find out what percentage of YouTube videos hit it big, cracking even 10,000 or 100,000 views. The results: You might have better odds playing the lottery than of becoming a viral video sensation.”

After one month of observation, only twenty five of Wilson’s ten thousand videos made the high mark: “A mere 25, 0.3 percent, had more than 10,000 views,” he observes. “Meanwhile, 65 percent of videos failed to break 50 views; 2.8 percent had zero views.” Slate Magazine’s advice: Don’t bet your career on launching your show biz on YouTube.

But the vibrant Zewdy is beating the odds. Here is the video in which she celebrates her multicultural background through music and dance.

Video: Zewdy – Into the Night