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MOST PEOPLE HAVE come across this confusing quirk of YouTube.
You’ve come across some viral video, be it a surfboarding seal or a dog having a meltdown over its own reflection in a mirror. After opening it up, you glance below the video to see just how viral it has gone – but the views are only a rather vague “301+”.
If you go back to the video in a few hours or the next day, the views would have suddenly jumped considerably, revealing that thousands of people watched the video.
Numberphile addressed the issue, and managed to find a Youtube analytics guru, Ted Hamilton, to explain it.
301+ appears when the video accumulates enough views to merit YouTube taking a closer look to ensure that they’re all real.
Closer look
While the video can still be viewed, and views recorded, they will not appear until YouTube analyse who was watched the video using a statistical verification process.
This is to ensure the views haven’t been manipulated – for example, by using bots.
Ted Hamilton said that Youtube sees views as a currency.
“So, a significant effort must be made to eliminate counterfeit views,” he explained.
Hamilton noted that when a video has a misleading preview or title, and the analytics show a lot of people clicking in only to immediately stop watching, some of these might not be added to the final total.
Any other suspect views will be disregarded.
But why does it stop at 301? And not 300, or 209?
Turns out this is simply an idiosyncrasy dating back to the early days of YouTube. When the code was written to dictate when the views should be analysed in more detail, a less than or equal to sign was used, instead of less than. This means that the views must reach over 300 for the effect to kick in.
Confused? Brady Haran of Numberphile explains it in more detail below:
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Some of the stats for YouTube videos are mind-boggling. My son likes watching videos of kinder eggs being unwrapped, nothing more, nothing less. Some of these videos, that are only a few months old can have 12 millions plus views. So somewhere out there is a woman making an extremely comfortable living from unwrapping kinder eggs.
Unboxing or buying the latest gadget and taking it out of the box for the first time is another!
My youngest son also loves watching these Kinder videos, whilst my eldest loves watching videos of some guy playing Minecraft!!! We’ve come a long way from watching Grange Hill and Swap Shop!!!!
Stampeylongnose and his minecraft antics. The bane of my broadband allowance.
That’s the guy Carina, if I ever meet him…….!!
If I have to listen to Stampylongnose any more my head will explode!!! 3 kids love him!!!!!
I thought my two year old daughter was the only one watching these! They come up on the recommended videos when she was watching Peppa pig. Now it is all she watches…
Ah Stampy videos. They are more requested than anything else in our house, including chocolate – and that says a lot considering I’ve a house full of little girls. Obsessed they are >.> But to be fair, their builds in minecraft are pretty incredible these days, so at least they learn a lot from watching and then trying things out themselves.
One of the stranger moments of my mothering in recent times, was the request for face painting during a playdate, and having to figure out how to make up three little girls as ‘Stampy, LforLee and AmyLee33′.
Colin same story at my place, older son watches some fellow playing minecraft ( and a couple of others) while younger one watches kinder eggs being unwrapped!
Well I’m off too watch kinder eggs being unwrapped not sure about mine craft looks awful
For me, YouTube has become a better source of entertainment than television, Numberphile being one of my favourite channels. I watch other educational channels too, and the content is really excellent. More luck to the folks who make money from it.
Vsauce is a great channel
Yep, it definitely is. Other channels I love are CGP Grey, Sci Show, Crashcourse, Mental Floss, Vlog Brothers, The Amazing Atheist.
Youtube>Television. No doubt about it.
Starting to think it’s better than TV myself! Veritasium is another great channel I’d recommend, and if your into gaming and having a laugh the RoosterTeeth/LetsPlay lads are great
Veristasium is another great channel (I just thought my list was getting a bit long! :P )
I love Lets Play channels too. I’ll check out your suggestions, and I’ll suggest you check out theRadBrad. His playthrough of Outlast is hilarious, but he has done a huge amount of other games. He’s not a trophy hunter as such, but I like to check his videos out to see what games I’d like to buy myself, and it has worked out pretty well most of the time. One other I’d advice you to check out is PS4Trophies. This guys is a serious trophy hunter. Very thorough walkthroughs for those of us who don’t have the talent to find all these trophies by ourselves. (I speak for myself there!)
Vice
http://youtube.com/user/LetsPlay This is my favourite channel, theres 6 of them and they play minecraft, GTA etc. I wouldn’t recommend them for kids though!
But TheRadBrad always talks during the cut scenes
I had never noticed this before. Thank you author
You’re a bit of a one-trick pony, aren’t you?
Google have messed up YouTube to no end.
Yes!! Trying every step of the way to get you to have a Google+ account, moving stuff around constantly and just generally making an astoundingly fantastic website unnecessarily messy.
Would love to know how to get your videos seen. I put one of my boxer blinking when I say blink!
This was posted onto Youtube about 2 years ago! To answer the question Its a simple if statement.
anyone who programs would easily know this.
if viewcount is <= 300 add 1
else goto x (x would be counter verification process)
Are you a wizard?
:)
I love watching hour long videos of Russians crashing into each other. Crazy Ruskies
Was this really worthy of an article?
Just looked at that cpm. Interesting. How much would ya get for that many hits do ya know
No idea Kieran, but pewdiepie has earned $7m from 5.4 bn views. The woman who makes the kinder unwrap videos lives in Mexico, so I’d imagine, with the cost of living there, it gives her a very comfortable living.
Around $1 for every thousand views if you are partnered
8 years of footage is uploaded onto Youtube every single day
My 3 favourite youtube channel’s at the moment are : 1. xcalizors 2. buzzfeed 3. Russel Brand
At least there won’t be overloading on the videos in the tube then so I guess youtube won’t break down anytime soon.
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