April fools pranks

YouTube has featured an April Fools prank on the site on April 1 of every year since 2008:


 * 2008: All the links to the videos on the main page were redirected to Rick Astley's music video "Never Gonna Give You Up", a prank known as "Rickrolling".

2009: When clicking on a video on the main page, the whole page turned upside down. YouTube claimed that this was a new layout.

2010: YouTube temporarily released a "TEXTp" mode, which translated the colors in the videos to random upper case letters. YouTube claimed in a message that this was done in order to reduce bandwidth costs by $1 per second.

2011: The site celebrated its "100th anniversary" with a "1911 button" and a range of sepia-toned silent, early 1900s-style films, including "Flugelhorn Feline", a parody of Keyboard Cat.

2012: Clicking on the image of a DVD next to the site logo led to a video about "The YouTube Collection", an option to order every YouTube video for home delivery on DVD, videocassette, Laserdisc, or Betamax tapes. The spoof promotional video promised "It's the complete YouTube experience completely offline.

2013: YouTube teamed up with newspaper satire company The Onion to claim that the video sharing website was launched as a contest which had finally come to an end, and would announce a winner of the contest when the site went back up in 2023. A video of two presenters announcing the nominees streamed live for twelve hours.

2014: YouTube announced that it was starting viral video trends, and users were allowed to submit ideas for trends or memes. Some of the trends included "Clocking", "Kissing Dad", and "Glub Glub Water Dance".