The Pekoe Group – Theatrical Marketing & Advertising

YouTube: The 301 View Dilemma

Since the debut episode of our in-office “reality series” (The Pekoe Office) that premiered on April Fools’ Day, it turns out that plenty of you were in on the joke – over 1,200 current views for the video proves it! The prank turned out to be a huge success. We hope everyone had as much fun watching it as we did making it!

However, our April Fools’ Video didn’t get to 1,200 views overnight: in fact, we experienced a well-known and odd phenomenon with our video’s view count – YouTube’s mysterious obsession with the number “301.” Once our April Fools’ Day video hit 301 views on YouTube, the view count was frozen for a short length of time.

As it turns out, this is actually a hidden function inside YouTube’s code to prevent “counterfeit views”: once a video hits 301 views, the view count is frozen to allow YouTube to “check” and make sure that each view is indeed legitimate. Once the views are verified, you’re on your way to 302 views and beyond!

So the next time you see a YouTube video with 301 views and over 5,000 likes, you no longer have to wonder if YouTube is doing something funky: it’s their behind-the-scenes magic working to make sure each and every video is properly accounted for – just like ours!