YouTube prank to hit 1M views by day's end
MANILA, Philippines - A few hours before the clock struck twelve on Monday, YouTube announced through a video that the site has collected enough videos to select the world's best entry and will close down soon.
In the three-minute video uploaded by the Google-owned site, YouTube chief executive Salar Kamangar said that the company started in 2005 "as a contest with a simple goal to find the best video in the world."
"Gangnam Style has the same chance of winning as a video with 40 views of a man feeding bread to a duck," Kamanger said.
Tim Liston, so-called "competition director," also that YouTube will stop operating by midnight on Monday, adding that the site will be back online in 2023 to announce a winner.
Internet celebrity Antoine Dodson, who also appears on the video, meanwhile encouraged viewers to watch as many videos as they can before the site's impending doom.
The company-produced video "YouTube's ready to select a winner" was apparently a prank by the site's staff to scare its close to a billion users all over the world for April Fool's Day.
Whether its fans fell for the joke or not, the video was seen over 900,000 by midday, and is expected to cross the 1 million mark before Tuesday.
Its fast-growing popularity can be attributed to the various YouTube celebrities interviewed for the video, including the boys of "Charlie Bit My Finger--Again!" and comedian Judson Laipply of "Evolution of Dance."
