For an April Fools gag, YouTube RickRoll'D their user base, sending all the homepage's promoted video clicks straight to that heinous Rick Astley "Never Gonna Give You Up" video. While I appreciated the joke, the information that it contained was a bit more interesting.

As far as I can tell, the video has been on the home page for about 24 hours now, give or take a few hours. In that time, it's racked up over 5.9 million views, almost 41 thousand comments, and 17 thousand ratings.

I'd assume a non-trivial portion of this traffic is from referrer links and multiple page views. That said, it gives you a rough snapshot of the upper limit on the typical volume of visitors and active (logged-in, commenting or rating) users that visit the YouTube homepage on a Tuesday.

Back in August 2006, YouTube had announced that over 100 million videos were watched per day. This figure is probably higher now, but it puts the homepage count into perspective, suggesting that perhaps 95% of YouTube's video views are from deep links to the site and offsite, embedded views.

The Worthy family feared for their lives when over 100 uninvited teenagers tried to crash a party for their son Christopher.  The party was meant to be a small gathering of 30 kids, however, details were posted on YouTube, attracting dozens of unwanted guests.

When the family tried to turn the teenagers away, Mr. Worthy was punched in the face and his son Stephen was badly beaten.  The family home was in complete chaos -- alcohol was stolen, fighting occurred, and windows were smashed.  Several teenagers were arrested and some injured.

Link.

27-year-old Anthony Anderson urinated on 50-year-old Christine Lakinski as she was dying of pancreatic failure.  Shouting, "This is YouTube material!" Anderson urinated on Lakinski as she collapsed on the street.  He also poured a bucket of water over her and smothered her in shaving cream.  The entire incident was captured on a mobile phone.

Anderson admitted to smoking a joint and drinking with friends before the incident occurred.  He will be sentenced on Oct. 22 after pleading guilty to "outraging public decency."  Link.

Greg Patillo is a beatboxing flautist who gives classic theme songs a hip-hop update.  Re-mixed with a little Axel F, Patillo gives the Inspector Gadget theme song some coolness, and his rendition of the Super Mario Brothers theme song will make you tap your foot to the beat. 

Previously:
Amateur musician sounds professional through basic timeline editing, Harmonica Beatboxing

Jason wrote up a great post over at Hackszine on how to download Youtube and Google videos using Safari or Firefox:

There are a few different ways to get at the FLV file that the video player application is downloading. Safari users can use the Window->Activities feature to locate and download flv files as they are playing, and Joshua Kinberg put together a couple nice Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox that make downloading pretty simple.

People can be cruel sometimes, especially in the comments that they leave on YouTube or any other blogging site. 

A man had posted a video of his kids on YouTube titled "Wii Kids".  I have not seen the original video, but from what I can make of it, it is a video of his kids getting very excited over their new Wii.  Apparently, many people left unnecessary comments regarding how overweight the kids are.  As a result, the father took the video down and posted a new video saying why.

Luke Johnson is conducting an "experiment" to see how many strangers will call him if he broadcasts his cell phone number on YouTube for the whole world to see.

His goal?  To have his phone ringing off the hook day and night. 

Why?  He's a lonely guy and needs to use up his cell phone minutes somehow.

His cell number is 602.435.3694.

I think the title is pretty self-explanatory...enjoy!

"Skatebording Girl"


 

I'm sure this video has made the rounds, but this is the first time I've seen it so I thought I would post it for your viewing enjoyment. 

Here is a video of Sarasota meteorologist, Justin Mosely, innocently taping a weather segment when a cockroach crawls across his feet. 

From an article in the St. Petersburg Times: