Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ is most-watched video on YouTube
Korean pop star wins more views than Kim Kardashian
By Mike Ayers
December 4, 2014 8:53 AM
Korean pop star Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ has more than 2 billion views. (YouTube)
Kim Kardashian may have tried to break the Internet, but Korean pop star Psy has come the closest.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
