The music video for South Korean singer Psy's Gangnam Style exceeded YouTube's view limit, prompting the site to upgrade its counter.

YouTube said the video - its most watched ever - has been viewed more than 2,147,483,647 times.

It has now changed the maximum view limit to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or more than nine quintillion.

Gangnam Style became a worldwide hit when it was released in 2012, largely due to the surreal video.

Gangnam Style has been watched more than 2.15 billion times as of 4 December

YouTube's counter previously used a 32-bit integer, which is a unit used to represent data in computer architecture. This means the maximum possible views it could count was 2,147,483,647.

On 1 December, it posted a statement saying: "We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer... but that was before we met Psy."

Google, which owns YouTube, later told website The Verge that engineers "saw this coming a couple months ago and updated our systems to prepare for it".

YouTube now uses a 64-bit integer for its video counter, which means videos have a maximum viewer count of 9.22 quintillion.

Psy has yet to comment although news of YouTube's change was posted on his Facebook and Twitter pages.

The second most-watched video on YouTube - Baby by Justin Bieber - lags behind Gangnam Style by more than a billion views.

 

 

 

 

Culled: BBC