PSY’s hit from 2012 recently went on to surpass 2,147,483,647 views. Anyone with a good knowledge of binary will recognise that number to be the maximum limit of a 32-bit integer. Way back in 2005, YouTube’s counter system was built using a 32-bit integer, with the reasonable thinking that no video would reach this limit.

YouTube has this to say:
“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 had to upgrade to a 64-bit integer (9,223,372,036,854,775,808)!

Hover over the counter in PSY’s video to see a little math magic and stay tuned for bigger and bigger numbers on YouTube.”

Only 9 quintillion more views till we break YouTube again…