How a YouTube video & Social Media got me on the TV news (twice)

written by admin on April 24th, 2010

Last month I wrote a blog post about putting up a video on YouTube video to find the owner of a camcorder that was lost during the Olympics.  In the video I showed some footage from the camcorder and asked viewers to share it around through Facebook & Twitter in hopes that I could somehow find the owner… and it worked.

Tons of tweets went out with a link to the video and people shared it on their Facebook walls.  The video quickly got thousands of views and one of those viewers noticed that there was a Washington license plate in the camcorder footage so sent a tip to a TV station in Seattle.  That station showed my video during their news program (which I didn’t even know) and guess who was watching – the owner of the camcorder!

The TV station contacted me for an interview which Craig & I did over skype.  They aired a follow up story again the next day on all 3 of their news programs and another station in Seattle contacted us to have us on their morning show, but we weren’t able to confirm everything and get to Seattle in time for that to happen.

Have a look at our follow up video of us meeting Bill in person (including that follow up news story that aired on TV in Seattle – which also aired in Vancouver by the way).

This really had an amazing outcome – Bill got his precious video footage back that he didn’t have a copy of and thought he had lost forever, Craig got an almost new camcorder (he kept it because he’s actually the one who saw it on the ground and he doesn’t have his own video camera), and I got a bunch of exposure for myself and my YouTube channel!  The original video now has almost 12,000 views and I got a number of new YouTube subscribers and followers on Twitter from it.

Thanks to everyone who spread the word and helped make this happen! :-)



YouTube Comment of the Day:

starprodigy has made a comment on We found the owner of the camera!:

josh, you and your friend are officially on my “coolest people ever” list!!
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Facebook Comments:

  1. Vance Sova

    Hi Josh,

    That’s an amazing story. I watched the video and indeed you were on the TV news in Seattle.

    It shows that doing a good deed can lead to a great reward.

    And that guy who lost the camera and was happy to give it to you was very generous.

    Good stuff all around.

    Vance

  2. Earl

    Awesome post Josh. Good deeds do get rewarded!

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