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200,000 views is ordinary for some authors and 5,000 is a breakthrough for others. So Sonder judges each video against the author’s own typical video, with a floor so a tiny account doesn’t call 300 views viral.

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The rule

A video has gone viral when its total views reach 10 times the author’s typical video, and at least 5,000. If the author has fewer than 5 videos to compare against, the line is simply 5,000 views.

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The details

Views added up across every platform the video was posted to through Sonder: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
The median total views of the author’s other videos first posted in the 90 days before this one. The median, not the average, so one earlier hit doesn’t raise the bar for everything after it.Videos less than 3 days old aren’t counted yet, because their views are still coming in.
went_viral_at is the hour the video’s total first crossed its line. Sonder checks every hour, so it’s accurate to the hour.
The line is fixed at the moment a video crosses it. If the author’s median later rises, a video that already went viral stays viral, and its date never moves.

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Worked example

An author’s last 23 videos from the past 90 days have a median of 1,200 views.
  • Their line is 10 × 1,200 = 12,000 views, which is above the 5,000 floor.
  • A new video reaches 12,840 views at 14:00 UTC on 15 September. It went viral then.
For a video that hasn’t gone viral yet, threshold is the line it has to reach right now, which is useful for showing “8,400 views to go”.

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Where it shows up

A viral day is a strong hint, not proof, that a sales spike came from the video. Sonder only sees views; your sales data completes the picture.