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YouTube is closing down, even as its parent Google readies a new service that allows search by smell. Twitter is morphing into a paid service.
Perplexed? These are some of the gags pulled by Internet companies on April Fools Day. On the Google homepage, the company lists “Google Nose,” still in Beta, under ‘new’ segment. The click leads to a page where Google Nose is described as a technology that “leverages new and existing technologies to offer the sharpest olfactory experience available.”
GOOGLE SNIFFS
A video introducing Google Nose explains that the feature allows users to “search for smells.” The product intersects “photons with infrasound waves” and “temporarily aligns molecules to emulate a particular scent.”
YouTube SHUTS
YouTube, a Google group company, announced that it will shut shop after being in business for eight years and resurrect itself in 2023. According to the YouTube blog, the site, which was launched in 2005, was nothing but a means to find the best video in the world.
“We are so close to the end,” Tom Liston, Communications Director at YouTube, said in a video. “Tonight at midnight, YouTube.com will no longer be accepting entries. After eight amazing years, it’s finally time to review everything that has been uploaded to our site and begin the process of selecting a winner.”
A spokesperson for YouTube said: “April Fools’ Day is a big part of YouTube’s culture. Each year, we enjoy finding ways to celebrate our community’s creativity, be it throwing it back to 1911 as we did in 2011 or 2008's prank of Rickrolling (directing every click to one video) on our site.”
Twitter SLIMS
Twitter also played its part by announcing a move to shift to a two-tiered service, comprising a paid option and the free version.
“Everyone can use our basic service, Twttr (without the vowel), but you only get the consonants. For five dollars a month, you can use our premium Twitter service which also includes vowels”.
The blog also displays mock tweets from popular users under the new tier-two system.
Further, Twitter will offer a single character extension, expanding the length of a Tweet to 141 characters, for a price to be decided by a bidding system. Cyberspace was agog with confessions of people falling prey to the pranks.
“Been done once again, cheers @google. Can’t believe I fell for google #nose, what an idiot! #googlenose” Josh Heaton, a student of Psychology”, posted on his Twitter account.
> adith.charlie@thehindu.co.in
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