I remember when YouTube first started displaying “301+ views” on popular videos that had just been released, and how people were freaking out about it. While we’ve all gotten used to it by now and we’ve always kinda known why YouTube did this, the company officially cleared things up with an infographic that it posted to Google+ yesterday alongside the announcement that the “301+ views” placeholder will soon be no more.
It was one of life’s great mysteries: why does YouTube show 301+ views when videos go live on their site? Not only is YouTube answering this, they’re officially announcing that they’re finally ready to do away with the infamous 301. According to a handy infograph posted to their Google+ page, the YouTube’s 301+ was originally an effort to combat views from bots, storing views from everyone — real or not — in a central location until they figured out what was a real view, and what was fake. Now, YouTube will update the view count as soon as they’re confident they are legit, instead of storing them while they sift through the rest. They wont be updated in real-time, but YouTube promises that they will be more “update-to-date” than they were previously. It’s probably not going to change anyone’s life, but it was just one of those weird and frustrating little things for content creators looking to keep track of views as they come in.
