Gangnam Style Video Breaks YouTube’s View Counter
Almost two years ago, Korean singer made Internet record with his Gangnam Style music video hitting 1 billion hits. He repeated the feat this December 2014 when the same video, seen below, went past the 2 billionth mark.
YouTube/officialpsy
More than just be the first YouTube video to go past 2 billion, the megamonster hit also broke YouTube's view counter since it is the first video "to break the reaches of a 32-bit integer," reports Techcrunch.
YouTube, owned by search engine giant Google, admitted it never thought that a video would be viewed greater than the 32-bit integer that it had to upgrade to a 64-bit integer.
According to Techcrunch, a 32-bit integer could be used to store numbers from -2,147,483,648 to 2,148,483,647. For a 64-bit integer, the range is wider from -9,223,372,036,854,775,803 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,803.
That means with the upgrade, YouTube's view counter could now go up to 9 quintillion views.
It could be recalled that when Gangnam Style hit the 1 billionth mark on Dec 21, 2012, it was even viewed by some Doomsday prophets as a sign of the end of the world. That was almost two years ago.
Fortunately, no one is linking its going past the 2 billionth mark as another Apocalyptic omen as people have shifted the burden of the end times to how Russia and its nuclear programme would behave.