Video and the Internet were the biggest stars of a Google commercial replaying highlights of 2012 where El Paso got to show off a bit of its playful side. The 2012 graduating class of Eastwood High School gets its nano-second of fame at the 58-second mark with a snippet from its graduation ceremony flash mob celebration dance.

The dance scene from Eastwood’s graduation in June 2012 appeared in the  “one minute, 30-second TV commercial featured the Eastwood students’ graduation dance, it’s not on the 2 minute, 46-second online version,”  according to a Jan. 7, 2012 article by Vic Kolenc at ElPasoTimes.com.

“The TV version only ran in the U.S., so we felt it was important to include more domestic moments that U.S. residents could relate to such as the Eastwood High School graduation flash mob dance and the LA Galaxy MLS cup victory,” Scott Chan, director of the Google Zeitgeist videos, told the El Paso Times.

It is great to see a bit of fun like this continue to entertain months after the event. The videos posted to YouTube attracted a lot of national attention back in June with coverage ranging from the Today show to Huffington Post and a variety of other news outlets and blogs.

It is interesting to see how at least 9 different videos of the event on YouTube fared with web audiences. All captured the same moment, but video quality, angle and keyword labeling may have been the key to going viral.

The video captured in the Google mashup came from YouTube user Melissa Franco who had a great view up front.  You can see it at this link. It has received more than 59,000 views.

Another popular angle of the event is from YouTube user Sarah Sandoval. The video, which can be seen here, has had more than 163,000 views, many of which likely came from being  linked from the Huffington Post article and Today show back in June

Sadly, the official Ysleta Independent School District video hasn’t seen much traffic, with just over 2,700 views. This might be due to a lack of keywords in the headline – “EHS Flash Mob.mov” isn’t particularly interesting and the acronym is a search killer. It doesn’t even appear when Googling for “high school flash mob,” which would be a common way of looking up the event after you hear about it.

Sandoval’s video of more than 163,000 views was headlined “Eastwood High School c/o 2012 Flash Mob” and Franco’s 59,000 view video also spelled it out with a headline of “Eastwood High School Class of 2012 Graduation Flash Mob.” Both Sandoval and Franco included “El Paso” in their description of the video. The official Ysleta ISD video description doesn’t mention El Paso, instead it says “Eastwood High School surprises their community at their 2012 Graduation Ceremony with a flash mob.” Community is generic on the web. “El Paso” will show up on more searches.

Sandoval and Franco had the best angles on the room – close enough to make out faces, but also able to include the whole group in the shot to see the synchronized moves and massive fun the class was having. The official Ysleta ISD video shot from the front of the room was hindered by being too tightly focused on the first rows and missed much of the overview of the larger crowd.

Other lesser trafficked videos from the event include:

Congratulations to the EHS Class of 2012 for keeping the memory alive on the web. Now, who’s going to do the mashup of all the angles?