This year YouTube pulled off an astounding prank on its users for April Fool’s day. Many YouTube regulars were in shock when they found the YouTube page flipped upside-down. When users selected videos from the ‘Recommended for You’ section or related sections they found the page flipped.

By clicking on the ‘Tips for viewing the new layout’ link you were redirected to the page below …
YouTube terms the April Fool’s prank as the “new viewing experience”. YouTube had designed a new interface which caused the layout to flip upside down. Many users could not view the videos, but you could simply add &flip=1 at the end of the URL of any video and view the prank.

Last year Youtube’s April Fool’s prank was based on the RickRolling phenomenon and eventually popularised the same. By RickRolling you can trick users to click on a link which will be redirected to a story or page with relative content. The user could be redirected to a forum thread or chatroom.

Using the same technique YouTube redirected users to the video of Rick Astley performing his 80’s one-hit-wonder, Never Gonna Give You Up. All the ‘Featured Videos’ on the front page were redirect to Rick’s video as part of the April Fool’s day prank by Youtube.

My team in office was eagerly awaiting a prank from YouTube or any other product of Google. In fact, every year, Google manages to fool people with ingenious stunts and tricks.

Hope to view more of these …