The first single from pop star Avril Lavigne’s third album (The Best Damn Thing) and No. 1 Billboard hit in the U.S. in 2007, Girlfriend recently achieved online notoriety when its video ousted YouTube’s longtime most-viewed champ, Evolution of Dance, on July 18, 2008.
Dance, uploaded by inspirational comedian Judson Laipply in April ‘06 just months after YouTube’s launch, held the top spot for almost two years. In an attempt to explain the vid’s appeal, NYTimes columnist Virginia Heffernan cited its lack of spoken word: American pop culture distilled and recognizable to all, no language skills needed.
So it was somewhat surprising when Girlfriend, a catchy but ultimately forgettable pop tune in which Lavigne expresses her desire to be with a boy who already has a girlfriend (and which was uploaded a year after Dance), overtook the reigning vid. Is the Sk8er Boi posse so big?
Probably not, but apparently they know their Internets. In an explicit attempt to push Girlfriend to the most-viewed vid (evar!), the fan site AvrilBandAids.com created a refresher page to goose the vid’s view stats. Leave the page open and it refreshes every 15 seconds, each time creating a new view for the video.
The resulting success of the video has caused some public relations problems for YouTube, which relies on its view counts for advertising dollars. The site avows that safeguards are in place to detect false ad impressions, and recently stated that autoplays do not count towards a video’s visible view count.
However, YouTube’s policy is to remove videos from the most-played section if it discovers their view count has been gamed. Since Girlfriend, as of this writing, remains the most-viewed vid, it follows that YouTube has not detected any false impressions (highly unlikely given the publicity of the Girlfriend campaign and YouTube’s insistence on its safety protocols). Even less likely, YouTube could have already removed false impressions from Girlfriend — thus implying that Girlfriend’s view count is entirely natural.
A third option is that YouTube has reached an accommodation with RCA, Avril’s label, that allows the vid to retain its No. 1 position. Spreading some good will among record labels, perhaps?
Whichever the case, Girlfriend is notable less for ascending to the No. 1 spot and more for what that ascension implies about the quality of YouTube’s view tracking and the priorities of the company. As long as Girlfriend remains the most viewed vid, YouTube is either unreliable or willfully negligent.
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