Lady Gaga has lost several millions of views on YouTube after the site cleared out what were considered “fake statistics” built by bots and hackers. Some lesser known YouTube channel owners have used bots as a way to beef up their view counts, but Lady Gaga is not one of them.

Lady Gaga is a well-known celebrity who uses other unconventional means to gain fame. As previously reported by The Inquisitr, she wore a gun bra for her first concert after the Sandy Hook shooting.

Lady Gaga encountered the sudden drop one month after the Sony and UniversalYouTube pages were stripped of 2 billion YouTube views. YouTube decided that videos migrated to their VEVO pages were “dead videos.” A small portion of the loss is the result of what YouTube calls “de-spamming the data.” Most of what affected Sony and Universal was a result of Sony, Universal, and EMI‘s decision to bet on VEVO.

VEVO is owned by Sony and Universal Music Group. According to the Huffington Post, other artists affected by YouTube‘s bot sweeps include Beyonce and Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson has no need of YouTube to maintain his fan base, but that’s beside the point.

According to E! Online, the decision was made last month. A YouTube spokesperson told Billboard at the time:

“This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our viewcount policy.”

Of course, YouTube has been diligent in removing “copied” videos since the beginning, with a massive public outcry when copyright infringement became the bane of a lot of lesser channels trying to cheat for more views.

It had been popular on YouTube to upload official music videos to public-owned channels back then, even though the videos were sometimes illegally downloaded to begin with. As previously reported by The Inquisitr, copyright infringement due to illegal downloading is a major issue in the United States. YouTube‘s taking down of videos and channels was a direct attempt to eliminate the issue.

In July 2011, around the time when copyright policies had started to relax a bit more, Lady Gaga’s YouTube account was suspended and promptly restored. Google, who bought YouTube in its early days, declined to comment when a notice on her channel read that it was guilty of “multiple or severe violations of YouTube‘s copyright policy.”

Do you think Lady Gaga’s loss of millions of views on YouTube will affect her fame that dramatically?

Lady Gaga Loses Millions Of YouTube Views is a post from: The Inquisitr

Facebook is on a roll and is looking to further build out it’s network. According to some sources, the social network is in talks with Vevo, a music video service prominently known on Youtube, to have them move over to their site.

Currently, the service has a contract with Youtube that has another year before it ends so nothing would be happening here very soon, but eventually if talks go over well. With nearly 1 Billion users, many of which who share and consume music while on the site, this integration with Vevo could be a great value add for users and in getting them to spend more time on the social network.

Via CNET:

“If Vevo were to jump, Facebook could boost its music offering, which it has done only in incremental ways in recent months. In September, Facebook Music was launched, a service that enables users to share information about their listening habits and tastes in real time.”

The music video service is very popular and just behind Youtube when it comes to unique visitors at almost 43 Million back in November.

“Here’s the most compelling thing a Vevo deal could offer Facebook: CEO Mark Zuckerberg could offer free-music listening in the form of music videos–just like YouTube does now–to the company’s users. That would certainly help Facebook keep users on the site longer, something the company is determined to do.”

People will always love music and this would give users easier access to the music that they love.

Do you share or listen to a lot of music on Facebook?

Facebook Wants Music Video Service Vevo Away From Youtube is a post from: The Inquisitr

comScore, Inc. released its latest data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 180 million US Internet users watched online video content in August for an average of 18 hours per viewer. The total US Internet audience also engaged a record 6.9 billion viewing sessions.

Google sites, boosted primarily by YouTube, ranked as the top online video content property in August with 162 million unique viewers. VEVO came in second but quite far at 62.3 million. Facebook remained at third position with 51.7 million viewers. Viacom Digital (49.9 million) and Microsoft sites followed (46.4 million).

Total viewing sessions at 6.9 billion was an all-time high last August. Google sites contributed the most with 3.5 billion viewing sessions.

Let’s stress what we just said: What else is new?

YouTube Tops August 2011 U.S. Online Video Rankings (What Else Is New?) is a post from: The Inquisitr