Thursday, April 19, 2007

Seriously, what's the problem with YouTube?

I would assume that YouTube has a server farm running. (Duh.) But why did they not actually make it WORK before releasing it to the public?

I posted a video yesterday, showing instant replay of a disputed goal call. After I posted it, it said it was processing the video. Fine. I understand. Then it came up with a link to the new video page. Great. Lookin' awesome.

I went to that page, and YouTube told me it didn't exist.

I went to my user page, and YouTube didn't list the video I had just uploaded.

It finally loaded a couple hours later, and when I went to the page it told me there were seven views.

I viewed it from three different machines, anonymously, and it still told me there were seven views.

Last night, I received email telling me that people had posted comments on the video. I went to the video, and it said "7 views, 0 comments."

This morning, I got email FOUR times telling me that there were new comments on the video. The first time I checked, I was told "112 views, 0 comments." I checked three more times, and each time I was told "112 views, 0 comments."

I just checked again. Now it's showing "112 views, 2 comments." Underneath this note, three comments are visible.

The email told me there were comments from users named Jaycwik, ethermp, Ajarzian, kindup2, and Bneezy. On the page, there are comments from Jaycwik, Titan124, and ethermp.

Oops, I just refreshed the page. Now there are "112 views, 2 comments," but six comments underneath.





Here, let me hit F5...and what the hell! Now it says "112 views, 2 comments," but it's back to showing three comments.

How can this site be such a buggy piece of squiggle? If Microsoft put out something this obviously, slap-in-the-face broken, you'd never hear the end of it. Why is Google, who now owns YouTube, getting the benefit of the doubt with broken software like this?

UPDATE (9:55 AM): Now it shows "247 views, 6 comments," with three comments showing underneath. It jumped from 112 to 247, and now it can't find all the comments.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suspect it has to do with which actually matters for their, you know, jobs. Broken necessary tools are much more infuriating than broken distraction toys, even if the toys are fun.

Anonymous said...

Don't you know that Google just throws stuff at the wall and sees what sticks, and that's the secret of their success?

Looks like they threw your stuff at the wall and it just didn't stick, Josh. Maybe it wasn't sticky enough?

Jon said...

Why didn't you post to Soapbox? You seem to have a love/hate affair with Google and their products (as evidenced by you complaining on a Google-hosted blog about Google product.) You're like a low-rent Scoble.

Joshua Trupin said...

Jon, your comments make you sound like...oh, what's that guy's name? Peter.