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YouTube Video Count Question Please

by Craig Fenton
4 replies
Hi Warriors:

Hope the week is going well (great here excluding being a Yankee fan since 1967).

Question that was brought to my attention please about YouTube.

Why with all the software out there and the worth of YouTube doesn't the amount of views a video has show in real time?

Example: Person I ate lunch with Monday uploaded a video. What they always do is after it is available for all to see they click on it to make sure it is okay, they call a family member to use a different browser to see if it plays without difficulty, and call a MAC user (since they and friends do not have any Mac products).

About six hours after the video was posted he got an email from somebody that they liked the product but wanted to wait until more people had seen the video and commented on the item or service for sale because the video showed only 1 view.

The person that had uploaded it checked the amount of views that the watchers see and it said 1 but in his control panel it showed 27 views.

Wouldn't it make sense to always have things in real time for the following reasons:
The more views showing the more the person is inclined to continue using YouTube
The more views showing the more the viewer is inclined to be interested in the person/company that uploaded the video
The more views showing the more somebody may be deciding that uploading a video would be good for their business or message.

To make sure what he told me was not an isolated event, I checked a video I uploaded and the stats in my control panel were much higher than the ones the viewer would see.

As long as it isn't the uploader clicking on their own video shouldn't things be up to the second with all the software and genius programmers out there?

Thanks for explaining to a non-tech person.
#count #question #video #youtube
  • Profile picture of the author TheCren
    There are way too many users constantly viewing videos, and far too many videos to have everything updated in real-time. The updating program they use would never get a break (I'm not sure if it gets a break now) and the hard drives would melt from all the heat generated by such activity. The cooling system and server housing materials don't exist to support what you're proposing.
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    • Profile picture of the author Craig Fenton
      Hi TheCren:

      Thanks for the response but I believe it is possible for things to be in real time. Would you agree the site MySpace gets a good amount of traffic from many demographics and people throughout the world? To see how they handle updating stats (not in control panels) but actually viewable by all, I went to MySpace 1 minute ago and looked at the profile of a very famous rock and roll musician that has been around since the mid 60's. I looked at the views and wrote it down. I hit home page went to Yahoo, and then went back to the musicians profile and it was updated in real time.

      I don't have knowledge about MySpace Traffic but would think between photos/videos/new accounts/updated/forums/messages/etc there equipment doesn't get to rest either and they were able to do what I suggested.

      Thank you for your time.
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  • Profile picture of the author mloveridge17
    I'm not a techie, but it seems to me that the video views should be a simple server-side "cookie" or variable that is automatically updated at the end of the video (a piece of code that is, i'm sure, embedded into the video during the encoding process). if that is the case, i can't see why you couldn't have a simple line of code on the page that calls that variable and displays it, even if it's static and updates only when you hit refresh.

    That said, there isn't anything any of us can do about it but complain. It's not something I would spend a whole bunch of time worrying about.
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    • Profile picture of the author Craig Fenton
      Hi there:

      Thanks for the post. In no way was I worried (the question came up from somebody else) but as little as I know about technology, I had the feeling I was not off the mark this could have been done the first day YouTube was available for public use. Your post seemed to agree it isn't something that would have cost them 56 trillion dollars. MySpace seems to more more consumer friendly in that regard.

      Thanks for your time and have a great night!
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