Gangnam Style Video is the Reason of YouTube's Views Counter Exception
The big hit of largest ever viewed music video of Psy's Gangnam Style, Directed by Lee Bo Young, so mammoth that YouTube (the video sharing website) literally was not ready to handle view count.
Views on Youtube
Song by South Korean Psy, released in July 2012 — accompanied by a horse-riding-like dance that became a global sensation — On December 21, 2012, Gangnam Style
became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views.
Youtube most viewed video
The song's music video has been viewed over 2.2 billion times on YouTube, and has been YouTube's most watched video since November 24, 2012, when it passed the music video for Baby (a Justin Bieber song). On December 1, 2014, YouTube announced that the song had broken the YouTube views counter at 2,147,483,647 views, prompting the company to update its software to handle larger numbers.
Youtube version
The video-sharing site shows that the official version of the video has had more than 2.15 billion views — the equivalent of one-third of the world’s population, although of course many people watched more than once.
YouTube Code Limitation
The problem was that YouTube designed its counter with what is known in computer science as a 32-bit signed integer, meaning that the maximum number of countable views was 2,147,483,647.
Youtube statement
“We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer,” YouTube, which is owned by search engine giant Google, said in a posting on it's Social Media site.
YouTube DevOps anticipation
YouTube engineers anticipated the problem and upgraded to a 64-bit integer. That means that “Gangnam Style” or future mega-hit videos can now go beyond nine sextillion views — a feat that, at least according to conventional wisdom, would be impossible to break.
Posted Status in Programming