After Apple announced the iPhone Duo, I had a spare half hour before a MacSparky Labs meetup about the new announcements. On a whim, I turned on the camera and talked through my thoughts on the new device. I posted the video a few days later without expecting much, but for whatever reason, the YouTube gods loved it. That little video now has over a million views.

Between the Field Guides and the MacSparky Labs, I’ve made thousands of videos. Very few of them get published publicly on YouTube, but I’ve been trying to do that a bit more lately. I’d like to hopefully get "found" by a few more like-minded people who may want to sign up for the newsletter or the Labs. I’ve also got a few things I want to get off my chest.

This unexpected viral video gave me a chance to see the impact of a million views on the MacSparkyverse. The answer, honestly, is not much. I didn’t see much change in newsletter subscriptions, Labs subscriptions, or Field Guide sales. It did add a few more subscribers to my YouTube channel. I feel like that’s good to know.

Granted, this video was just me talking about the new iPhone, and I didn’t make any pitch for people to buy anything or sign up. That makes this a pretty limited test of what YouTube can do for the business. Still, I think it’s a good data point. It doesn’t change my opinion that I should be making a few public YouTubes every month, and I intend to do so.

There’s also another piece of this. We all have to deal with metrics, whether you’re a doctor, a plumber, or a silly nerd making videos about iPhones. It’s very easy for us to let those metrics take the wheel. I can tell you that after my big successful video, there was a part of me … just for a minute … that thought, "Hey Sparky, how can you make every video a million-view video?" The answer is to start letting the algorithm drive and planning content around views rather than whatever it is I actually want to say.

Fortunately, I didn’t think about that too long. I’m not looking to become a world-famous YouTuber here. This is just another little thing I want to do in addition to the rest of the things I do as MacSparky, and by no means is it the most important. It’s a good reminder that it’s very easy to turn views, praise, rankings, or other metrics in on themselves and let them quietly displace the purpose of the work.

For me, I’m always going to ask myself, "Would I still want to make this video if it got my usual number of views?" before I’ll ask myself, "Is this topic going to blow the roof off YouTube?" I bet you’ve got a similar metric that could easily derail you. What’s your test to make sure you don’t fall into that trap?

P.S. Here’s my most recent one, talking about where we should draw our lines with AI. You’ll see that one’s doing just fine, but isn’t anywhere near the success of the iPhone Duo video.