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March 31, 2008

YouTube RickRolls Users

Michael Arrington

65 comments »


If you aren’t familiar with RickRolling - it’s when someone puts a link on website to something, but it actually takes you to a music video of Rick Astley’s “hit” song Never Gonna Give You Up.

YouTube is RickRolling its own users on April 1. All of the featured videos for YouTube UK and YouTube Australia actually link to the Rick Astley video. We’ll see if YouTube.com does the same at midnight EST tonight, too.

This is ok, but not nearly as funny as it would be if the YouTube team broke into the Google search servers and simply redirected Google.com to the video. Now that would be funny.

More coverage of this here.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. 113.com

    March 31st, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    Ha ha. Very funny.. :-o

  2. Rob Sandie

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:04 pm

    Still not as cool as the Obama remix he does with Rick: http://tinyurl.com/yw9ufb

  3. Bob

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:05 pm

    “YouTube is apparently RickRolling it’s own users…”

    There’s no apostrophe in the possessive its, you April Fool.

  4. Don Wilson

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:06 pm

    Awesome, a lot of stupid users won’t get it, though. ;) YouTube, have fun deleting all of the questions as to why “videos aren’t working”.

  5. Henry Work

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:11 pm

    I like how they don’t link to the original RickRoll video, but to a newly created one with the username ‘YTRickRollsYou’. Looks like they created this user about a week ago, with appropriate header image: http://uk.youtube.com/user/YTRickRollsYou

  6. Chris Thomson

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    Looks like they’re going to do it worldwide — they also did it for the de site ( http://de.youtube.com )

  7. bob cobb

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    you can thank offtopic for the rickroll trend

  8. YDRIVEN

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    YDriven crazy yet??? :-)

  9. Adam Singer

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    why do i have the sneaking suspicion this is not the last time i’ll see rick roll in the next 24 hours!?

    damn you digg! :)

  10. Billy

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:25 pm

    Ah, nerdy pranks. Gotta love ‘em.

    Is TechCrunch going to participate? :)

  11. Jared

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:27 pm

    Epic.

  12. lawrence

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    Rick Astley is iconic 80s. good songs!

    but surely there are more common, cheezier 80s music videos to use - instead of Rick’s

  13. jenkins

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    another really stupid trick!

  14. OwlBoy

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:36 pm

    This would mean that they got the rights to have the video on YouTube.

    It would be crazy silly with all the lawsuits going on for YouTube to be uploading things they don’t have the rights to! :)

  15. Luka

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:39 pm

    FR locale of Youtube has it too.

  16. drew olanoff

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:39 pm

    a record label is somewhere being real pissed right now.

  17. oswaldo

    March 31st, 2008 at 7:57 pm

    can you imagine if rick got royalties on this? if it played on the radio he would, right?

  18. Sarah Meyers

    March 31st, 2008 at 8:00 pm

    I’m checking this out to see if they actually do it at 12pm EST. That’s in one hour. yea!

  19. Cat

    March 31st, 2008 at 8:00 pm

    Here’s a link to video press release:

    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI

  20. Steve

    March 31st, 2008 at 8:12 pm

    Rickrolling got its highs almost one year ago at dvxuser.com.

    And I followed the link for more coverage and got rickrolled. :S

  21. Sunil

    March 31st, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    April Fool :D

  22. Sarah Meyers

    March 31st, 2008 at 8:18 pm

    I just got rick rolled by Cat.

  23. alex

    March 31st, 2008 at 8:28 pm

    this is just stupid. at least choose a better song.

  24. sds

    March 31st, 2008 at 8:41 pm

    good

  25. Michael Bakovic

    March 31st, 2008 at 8:50 pm

    Lol, I wonder how many views this video will get.

    -Check out my site for ways to make money online http://mikesmoneyclub.blogspot.com/

  26. Irene Smith

    March 31st, 2008 at 9:14 pm

    That sucks cos youtube is blatantly deceiving viewers. Apart from boosting the views of one video, you’d wonder what they get out of this.

    Irene Green lasers guide

  27. Tom Lulson

    March 31st, 2008 at 9:14 pm

    Gahahaha! Anonymous is Legion! Our influence spreads like wildfire!

  28. Tommy

    March 31st, 2008 at 10:13 pm

    Isin’t it copyright infringement when you KNOWINGLY upload a copyrighted work?

  29. Trevor

    March 31st, 2008 at 10:15 pm

    It’s up on youtube.com now too.

  30. naveed

    March 31st, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    If you want the actual videos instead of Rick Astley, this can help - http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~naveed/metubearrrgg

  31. Henry Work

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:28 pm

    63,291 RickRoll’d and counting…

  32. YouGotRickRolled.com

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:38 pm

    LOL!

    http://www.viddler.com/explore/RickRoll/videos/2/

  33. Bigstarlet

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:51 pm

    I know you laugh now, but that song was HUGE back in the day. Even Live105 played it. Ask Steve Masters :p

  34. Hendrik

    April 1st, 2008 at 12:03 am

    yup, youtube.com rickrolls as well…

  35. ghertg

    April 1st, 2008 at 1:32 am

    I have seen this on M a r r y M i l l i o n a i r e .C o m. It just a celeb dating site.

  36. bloger

    April 1st, 2008 at 1:55 am

    very funny man. really. ciao from romania.

  37. Pratibha Jadon

    April 1st, 2008 at 2:12 am

    Yeah…Good one

    [:)]

  38. micfo.com

    April 1st, 2008 at 2:14 am

    it’s funny! Keep It Turned On..

  39. Sidharth

    April 1st, 2008 at 6:38 am

    Hey its happening in India also

  40. patricia

    April 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Yeah, cool!

    http://no-effort-money.blogspot.com/

  41. Mark

    April 1st, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    Doh, I just got Rick Rolled by MA… “More coverage of this here”.. haha.

  42. Dude

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 am

    /b/… That is all.

  43. youtube

    April 15th, 2008 at 5:04 am

    thanks. you

  44. youtube

    April 15th, 2008 at 5:05 am

    thanks.

  45. youtube

    April 15th, 2008 at 5:06 am

    good.

  46. youtube

    April 15th, 2008 at 5:07 am

    no problem. no wall

  47. youtube

    April 15th, 2008 at 5:07 am

    youtube thanks.

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