YouTube now shows number of likes instead of views a video gets.
But it seems to only do this in the home tab. Search and subscription tabs still show the view count.
Now I don't think view count is much of an indication of quality for a video, but the number of likes even less so. It varies quite a bit even on video to video from the same creator depending on if a like is called out for, or audience type.
Certainly not the most egregious change they've made, but a bit of an odd one I can't quite figure out why.
Likes alone doesn't tell you much, like per view is better, but what if, and hear me out, we had something like an anti-like™
Then so you could show the ratio of likes to anti-likes™
Youtube should really look into adding anti-likes™
A button with a representation of “I did not enjoy this video, Mesdames et Messieurs at YouTube, please let others know they, too, may not enjoy it” in some kind of visual medium that is more concise than “I did not enjoy this video, Mesdames et Messieurs at YouTube, please let others know they, too, may not enjoy it” would be nice.
15k likes to millions of views would be poor performance, but only if you had already clicked in on the video to see the view count. I know what they really want is a hypothetical single "how much you will like watching this video" number to display, but I feel "likes" (and to maybe a lesser degree view count) need a second number that you can compare with. A bit like getting ratioed on twitter, you need both the comment and like/retweet counts to make that judegment.
From what I've heard, they're currently running A-B-tests on that. So, unless you've seen an official announcement, you might just be one of the test subjects...
Oh yeah, I'm not saying there's no chance of them permanently implementing it. They certainly wouldn't be A-B-testing it, if they weren't think about it.