Kim Kardashian may have tried to break the Internet, but Korean pop star Psy has come the closest.
When YouTube was designed, it was never expected for a video to exceed 2,147,483,647 views because of how the counter software was originally coded. “It’s like a car odometer,” says YouTube spokesperson Matt McLernon. “Once it rolls over the last nine, it resets.” He said the company expected two billion would be enough. It wasn’t.Since his breakout hit “Gangnam Style” made its debut in July 2012, it has become the most watched video on YouTube to date, scoring more than 2.1 billion views. While this feat is staggering in itself, Google posted a nugget on its YouTube Google+ page Monday about this accomplishment, saying that the video had been viewed so many times Google needed to “upgrade” the video site’s back end.
Exactly how did Google know they were in need of an upgrade?
A few months ago, site technicians noticed the view count for “Gangnam Style” would eventually hit that number and require a behind-the-scenes tweak. If they didn’t do anything, in this case, the number would have remained static in the video’s counter, but YouTube would continue to keep an accurate count of views in a separate location. Google updated the entire site’s counter software, making it so a video can now register more than 9 quintillion views—or 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.
YouTube and Google marked the occasion with a special counter on the “Gangnam Style” page. A cursor hovering over the counter spins through the view count in the way a mileage counter on a car would.
Along with being a catchy song—it was still in the top five of YouTube songs streamed this past summer—Psy’s YouTube channel has bumped his other tracks into stratospheric numbers as well. Earlier this year, he released a collaboration with Snoop Dogg called “Hangover,” which has been viewed more than 162 million times since June 8.
“This is what happens when the whole world can play something at the same time,” Mr. McLernon said. “And when one video brings you to a channel, you often go and watch other videos.”
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