Every once and a while, to get my kids to giggle, I’ll go over to YouTube and play the video, “Charlie Bit My Finger.” I’m sure you’ve seen it before but if you haven’t, you should. It’s quite humorous. And, in case you didn’t know, it’s also the most viewed YouTube video of all time, pushing towards 190 million views.

190 million views?

One day, a parent decided to grab their camera and film their two boys on the couch and throw it online. Now it has become the most watched video on a website that’s ranked 3rd highest in web traffic in the world.

That’s huge.

Here’s a comparison: Super Bowl XLIV, the most recent super bowl which aired in February 2010, became the most-watched television program ever, drawing an average audience of 106.5 million viewers. This little video has almost twice as many views as the world’s “most-watched television program ever.”

Again, huge.

Here’s my question: Would you consider this video a success? Or, better yet, in your opinion, what’s the measure of success?

We have a family who, we can assume, was paid zero dollars to film this video and place it on a free website. Contrast that with a group of men who are paid millions of dollars to play a single televised game, with tons of cameras, people paying to watch in person, and companies paying millions just to have a few seconds to promote their product.

If you measure success monetarily then you’d probably say the Super Bowl wins. If you measure success statistically, then you’d probably argue that the viral video is the champ. But, in the end, which of you is correct? What’s the measure of a successful person, group, company, church, or organization?

Let’s take Carlos Whitaker – blogger, pastor, and musician – and use him as another example. If you were to compare his blog to my blog, hands down, Carlos has been more successful than I have. But if you take the amount of followers he has on Twitter and compare that to Conan O’Brien, he falls enormously short.

Most worship pastors are not signed with a major record label nor have a professionally produced album. Carlos does. Success. Well, compared to Paul Baloche, Carlos is nine albums short. Again, Mr. Whitaker falls short.

But I would argue, now that I’ve though about it, can success actually be measured?