When YouTube made Jackie Chan and Mohanlal to tango

Kochi: There could no better demonstration of a YouTube video's reach than the sight of Jackie Chan dancing to Mohanlal's tune. The 'Jimikki Kammal' song in the Mohanlal-starrer 'Velipaadinte Pusthakam' went so viral that there was a video showing the global martial arts star Jackie Chan on a gig to the highly localised beats of the song.

Ajay Vidyasagar, the Asia-Pacific head of YouTube pointed out during his keynote address at Techspectations that the song had clocked over 92 million views across the world. "More than the original video, what was put up on YouTube was the people's unique expression of the number," he said.

It was not just Jackie Chan who was bowled over by 'Jimmikki Kammal'. American television host Jimmy Kimmel initially even thought it was a song about him, and tweeted about it.

A similar thing happened with the 'Kolavaeri Di' song. "Sony's Sridhar called me up to say that the MTV was not giving air-time to play the Dhanush number," Ajay said.

"He said that the number was excellent though he was modest about it. In hindsight, it went far beyond what all of us imagined," Ajay said.

The song had 165 million views on YouTube. But here is the interesting thing: "Only 50 per cent of the views came from the Sony Music upload. The rest were people's way of expressing the song in their own way," Ajay said.

But all of this video revolution began with South Korean rapper Psy's 'Gangnam' style.

Psy had been performing this song for over three years before he hit the jackpot on YouTube. Even Ajay was not particularly impressed with the song, but as proof of what video can do, he is elated by Psy's success.

Read more on Techspectations 2018