YOUTUBE RECENTLY ANNOUNCED plans to change the way subscriber counts are displayed on the site. Beginning in August, instead of showing precise totals (i.e., 14,230,974), the video service will show a rounded number (i.e., 14 million).
Unlike similar redesigns by Twitter and Instagram, which deemphasized follower count by shrinking the type in which it is displayed, YouTube’s change eliminates publicly available precise tallies, meaning that only the YouTube creator will know exactly how many accounts have subscribed to their channel. What’s more, YouTube said the change will also affect the data it feeds outside services like Social Blade, which display real time subscriber counts, view totals, and estimate YouTubers’ potential earnings.
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