NEW YORK – The online world got an April Fools’ Day makeover as YouTube rolled out 1911 viral videos and the Huffington Post put up a mock pay wall.
Lighthearted pranks are an annual Web tradition on April Fools’ Day, with jokey redesigns and parody products. The Huffington Post presented one of the most pointed gags in erecting a fake New York Times-style pay wall, but only to employees of the Times.
YouTube remade viral videos like the Annoying Orange and the Keyboard Cat in scratchy black-and-white silent clips, purportedly from 1911. Hulu took a similar approach, dating their video repository to the Web’s dial-up days of 1996.
Animal Planet sent out a joke press release announcing a deal for the famous escaped Bronx Zoo cobra — news that some outlets reported earnestly.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
