As anyone who surfs the World Wide Web on a daily basis couldn’t have failed to notice, today was April Fools Day, and some video sites got involved in the pranking.
The biggest and best one was by market leader YouTube, who decided to take the RickRolling phenomenon and take it global and mainstream.
What Is RickRolling
RickRolling is the trick of getting someone to click on a link to go to a story or page related to the subject at hand, maybe in a forum thread or chatroom.
However, instead of the link that is expected, you’re taken to an image or video of Rick Astley performing his one and only hit from the 1980s, Never Gonna Give You Up.
I’ll admit to having been RickRolled a few times, but today I was RickRolled by YouTube itself, as it changed the links from all the ‘Featured Videos’ on the front page of both the global, and regional sites redirect to Rick.
Kill Or Cure?
By doing this, YouTube are either going to kill the meme or make it grow even bigger. It’s estimated that 3 million people have already been tricked by this April Fools joke today.
Apart from YouTube, other video companies also decided to get in on the act.
Blip.tv and Break A Leg
Blip.tv also went down the RickRolling route, this time announcing the introduction of the Rick-Roll advertising format, to work alongside the Pre-Roll and Post-Roll.
Hugely popular Web TV sitcom Break A Leg has been cancelled, or not as the case may be. The announcement was posted on an ominous sounding post on the site, with some people even believing it.
I’m just glad that April Fools Day only comes around once a year as however funny some of these may be, and being RickRolled by YouTube was indeed funny, it’s still annoying being bombarded online for 24 hours.
