Apparently, Korean pop star Psy’s “Gangnam Style” is the horrendously catchy music video that just keeps on giving. It also just keeps on racking up video views on YouTube. The combination of an earworm tune, bizarre dance moves, horses, drop-crotch pants and disco balls managed to max out YouTube’s video counter at 2,147,483,647 views.
An explanation came from YouTube in the form of a Google+ post on Monday: “We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (=2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met PSY. ‘Gangnam Style’ has been viewed so many times we have to upgrade!” The post then suggests viewers hover over the counter to see “a little math magic.”
The view counter on the “Gangnam Style” YouTube page stalled for a bit before a fix was put in place. It currently shows 2,152,445,439 views, but when you hover over it with a mouse, the numbers start to madly rotate. The view count is rising, but it is unclear how accurate the counter is at this point. It’s also worth noting that YouTube channels are able to display higher numbers, but an individual video’s view count apparently has a limit.
Source: CNET