Interesting how video-sharing has transformed the face of romance- we did a quick snapshot of Valentine’s on YouTube, and here’s what we found:

Highlights
We found that people were utilizing video sharing extensively:

– Over 1200 Valentine videos were added on the 14th, the vast majority of which were video ecards of widely varying quality. Some were the standard slow song + hearts + scripted “I love you”, while more original directors took advantage of the snow to scrawl out their messages.

– 5 Marriage proposals were contributed, bringing the total to 254 on the site, ranging from CG animated productions to balloon fly-bys, to more awkward productions.

– Interesting twists on the traditional for single users – one user fished for Valentine suitors with a rendition of “As Time Goes By” that garnered almost 60,000 views, over 450 comments and 20 video responses, while another user volunteered to be any single persons sweetheart via a personal email message, which generated a whopping 609,366 views as of this writing and over 2500 users took her up on her offer.

– Viral marketing pieces for Nokia and Siemens (set in the future) under the premise of being wedding proposals did not fare as well as their organic brethren, generating just under 3600 views for Nokia (in 11 months) while things look a bit better for Siemens which was viewed just over 6500 times since it launched Valentine’s Day.