I’ve been watching the stats on YouTube for the screencast I posted yesterday and a couple things are becoming obvious: In terms of real-time reporting the stats don’t mean much. I’m not sure if they have a server sync problem or what, but there can be times where even on the same page two different view counts show up. I wish I’d taken a screenshot.
I’ve also see counts go up and down. At one time YouTube was reporting 541 views. Then it went down to 345. That seems to be its favorite number, because for the last several minutes that’s where the count has stayed–despite several new links to the video feed and I’m sure many more viewers.
Update: Here’s a screenshot showing two different stats now, 345 and 611.
I’m not sure what its update rate is. Minimally, YouTube should be showing a last update time for their view counts and other data.
And one more thing while I’m at it: Why is it so impossible to find a video that I know exists on YouTube using their text search? You know how I find things? I go to Google. (I’ve tried Microsoft’s Live Search, but it usually doesn’t find videos I’m looking for, but then again their video search is in beta.)