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You’ve probably seen it before: a new video from a popular producer of content gets uploaded. The viewcount shoots toward the skies, then, suddenly, it stops, usually right at 301. The “Likes” are still steadily climbing. What the hell is going on?
This is been one of the internet’s greatest mysteries, but finally, someone has asked the right person. YouTube celeb and frothing numbers geek Grady Haran, a.k.a. Numberphile, spoke with Ted Hamilton of YouTube Analytics. Is there are large global conspiracy? Nope, just a simple question of coding and making sure that nobody’s gaming the system. Cool to hear about what happens on the back-end. [BuzzFeed]
Love getting one of my videos hitting 301 – normally before I go alseep with high hopes of waking up the next day seeing a gazillion views only to find a few thousand
I did always wonder why it was random – 301 is the most common but you get 302/303/304 quite often – must be to do with the multiple reports back
he explains 302/303/304 near the end. yea, something about simultaneous views from different servers… although nothing is really simultaneous, i guess it depends on how precisely you are measuring the time-stamp on the log.
Not that I ever thought this was common knowledge but I knew about this from before. Ergo, this can’t have been the release “at last”.
Thanks anyway, this’ll make it all a bit more public.
Shame about the video itself though, the guy took way too long to explain what happens. The video itself didn’t have to be so long, particularly those comically slow diagrams of views coming in!