I noticed something rather interesting. The views counter in threads only updates itself after someone posts in the thread. I don't get it, isn't it supposed to update itself after someone reads through the thread or at least update every hour or so or is that not the function?

Not necessarily.  I have seen some threads that have 0 replies and have 71 views (or however many views it receives).  What I have noticed about the view counter, however, is that it seems awfully high, which makes me wonder if it's from Yahoo, Google and Bing searches accessing it?  I'm not sure how often the view counter updates, but it seems to take at least fifteen or so minutes initially to update.