I always giggle when hearing some variation of how accountable the Internet is. My experience, in fact, is quite the opposite. However, what brings this up now is an article in the Wall Street Journal which details why no one counts statistics the same - video, search, etc.

I've extracted some comments with regards to online video for you entertainment. To summarize it says that today's videos can be hard to track because no one knows how to count user intent. How should views of online videos be counted -- should you have to watch all the way through?

To understand the video-numbers predicament, consider the site vidmeter.com ... Its software crawls 10 major video sites, including YouTube, and grabs the stats they display. Vidmeter's editors sift through the top videos and tally total views, taking into consideration that the same video is often posted on multiple sites. ... Vidmeter does its crawl each day, and ranks videos on views over the most recent 24 hours. ... But adding up view counts is difficult, because different video sites ... have different definitions for what constitutes a viewing. For instance, every time someone clicks play on a video at vSocial ... it counts as a view, even if the video playback is stopped immediately, and even if there were multiple clicks from that same computer on the same day ... Yet on Revver, a site that shares ad revenue with users who upload videos, a view is only counted if the viewer watches all the way through and downloads an ad at the end. The site also tries to put a cap on multiple views from the same computer by monitoring Internet protocol addresses, a spokeswoman said.

YouTube declines to disclose how it counts views of videos -- much to the frustration of tech pundits like billionaire investor Mark Cuban, who has questioned the stats on his blog.

This same type of discussion will take place at Comcast and Time Warner Cable when VOD grows larger and advertisers demand accountability. However, knowing my friends in the television business, the main difference will be that they will eventually agree to a standard definition after a protracted period of time in which to flounder. The Internet gang just likes to yell why their view is the only one that makes sense.

So, the next time you hear stats bandied about, remember to keep a little dose of skepticism with you.