Washington Post misrepresents Dr. Paul's youtube viewership

[Suzu]

Claims that Obama is most popular on youtube.

Here's the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/20/AR2007052001408.html

Zuthor: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/jose+antonio+vargas/



"Today in 'Online, GOP Is Playing Catch-Up', you wrote 'No Republican comes close to matching the popularity of another Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, on YouTube'.

This is inaccurate. As of this writing, Obama has 5,479 subscribers, and Republican candidate Ron Paul has 7,991.


Discussion thread:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=803

[JohnCrabtree]

Maybe they were talking about vieews rather than subscribers? Ron Paul has many more subscribers, but Obama has more views On June 13 9:30 AM
Ron Paul Subscibers 16,131
Ron Paul Views 1,105,536
Obama Subscribers 6, 565
Obama Views 2,875,711

What's interesting is that Baracks videos are watched by a lot less people now, he simply posts more of them. He has 76 videos while Ron Has 23, So each video has a lower average view on Obamas.

In fact, Obama's last video to hit 100,000 views was posted 2 months ago. And he only has 3 videos that have hit 100,000 two of those posted over 4 months ago.
Ron Paul has 4 videos posted within the last month at 100,000+

So although the subscriber # and an in depth look at the numbers show that Ron Paul is much more popular on YouTube, the total views # skews people into thinking that Obama is more popular, even though it is his PAST popularity that is showing.

[nayjevin]

the statistics are somewhat immaterial anyway, but:

subscribers is the only somewhat relevant one.

views can be easily pumped -- just open 17 tabs in firefox and set the video to repeat. moves it up on the list and adds many views.

you can also set up multiple accounts and subscribe with each account to pump up subscribers, but that's more of a pain, and slower