April Fools starts early with Google and Twitter pranks

Google announced the closing of YouTube and Twitter said it was deleting all vowels!

Yet another April Fools is upon us. It is a day when we will all inevitably read headlines that make us go "WHAT?!? You can't be serious!" before we realize that what day it is and that, yet again, we've been had.

This year's April Fools pranks started even earlier than usual, with companies perhaps thinking that if people read the news on March 31st, their guard might be even further down before the rug is pulled out from under them!

First it was Google, which pulled a big prank on Sunday by releasing a video that announced the imminent closing of YouTube.

Turns out that YouTube was actually a contest this whole time; one to find the best video in the world! At midnight, the video said, the site would no longer be accepting entries, and would be announcing the best which video had won.

"After eight amazing years, it is finally time to review everything that has been uploaded to our site, and begin the process of selecting a winner," the guy in the video said.

The winner will get an MP3 player that clips to their sleeve, and a $500 creative stipend for their next creative project. But all was not lost, as Google said that the site would reopen ten years from now in 2023... featuring only the winning video, and nothing else.

You might be thinking that nobody could have possibly fallen for this, but you'd be very wrong. Here are some of the comments from the video on the YouTube page:

• I think I about had a heart attack.. 95% of my day is spend glued to Youtube.. :( Not nice

• So what your saying is, Your going to delete my videos I worked hard on to get others to view and subscribe to me, and I've spent years getting to just 253 subscribers and then close Youtube down until 2023. So all this hard work I did and i finally became a partner as well, will be wasted.

• Did they say they were going to delete all the videos and relaunch YouTube in 2023 or and I misunderstanding this

• Not sure if they really shutting down YouTube...Or just April fools joke..

• You are deleting EVERYTHING on youtube!?! I posted a video today, not to try to win this, yah... I think it's gona be shown on here D;

In all seriousness, though, what would the best YouTube video of all time be? David After Dentist? Charlie Bit My Finger? The Bed Intruder Song? Or, my personal favorite, Indian Superman? (Don't believe that is the best video ever? Check out what happens at 1:16!)

If there is one thing I think we can all agree on, though, it is that Gangnam Style is NOT the best YouTube video ever, statistics be damned!

Not to be outdone, Twitter also got in on the April Fools action Sunday, announcing that it was splitting into a two-tiered service: a basic service called Twttr and the premium “Twitter” service which also includes vowels. (Am I the only one who flashed back the Qwickster fiasco of 2011 while reading that?)

"We’re doing this because we believe that by eliminating vowels, we’ll encourage a more efficient and “dense” form of communication. We also see an opportunity to diversify our revenue stream," Kvyn Wl (aka, Kevin Weil), Director of Product at Twitter, wrote.

Here is what Barack Obama's famous relection Tweet would look like on Twttr:

The idea, Twitter said, came from Michael Sippey, Twitter’s VP of Product.

"I was carpooling home after Twitter’s seventh birthday party,” he told me, “with my head filled with images from our past, like our early logo where we spelled it TWTTR, in neon green toothpaste. And then Prince’s song “I would die 4 U” came on the radio. I felt like there was something there, but I wasn’t sure what or how to bring it to market," Sippey said.

"Then later that night, I was watching “Wheel of Fortune” with @adambain, and a contestant yelled out ‘I wanna buy a vowel’. Everything just sort of clicked. Adam and I turned to each other and high-fived. It was one of those product moments that just felt like magic.”

Twttr said the service would be rolling out slowly to a small percentage of users, then growing to 100% over the next few days.

"We recommend that you practice using only consonants (and “y”) with the hashtag #nvwls (or if you have paid for our premium service, use #icanhasvowels)."

This prank was even less easy to believe than the Google one, but I'm sure that more than a few people actually believed this. Btw, you can actually try Twttr here to see what it would actually look like!

With the jokes starting earlier and earlier these days, I warn you to be on the lookout all day, dear readers, and don't believe anything you read without thinking about it first!

(Image source: https://www.someecards.com)