April Fools’ Day jokes are by and large disappointing — Google aside — but there is some hope outside of Mountain View.
Here’s what companies other than Google did that was actually interesting.
Tumblr — Tumblr Pro
Tumblr pranked a lot of its young userbase after it added a button to allow users to upgrade to ‘Tumblr Pro’ on its microblogging service.
Clicking to upgrade to the free service, users are shown a video designed to inspire creativity within… and are ultimately rewarded only with a hat for their avatar.
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I activated Tumblr Pro and this happened???????????????? pic.twitter.com/OOqiCtvqp0
— LadyPipit’s Helix (@ladyypipit) April 1, 2014
Should I go tumblr pro or?
— Maria Camila (@slickorganz) April 1, 2014
What’s “Tumblr Pro?” I’m scared to activate it.
— Bae Gatsby (@TheDakari) April 1, 2014
Airbnb — List Your Desk
The global marketplace for rentals expanded into coworking with a new service that allows you to list your desk as available to rent.
A longer explanation:
iFixit — Acquired by Apple
This iFixit press release about being acquired by Apple made us smile, but it also succeeded in fooling some tech press.
Flipboard — Flappy Board
Flipboard spared us the pain of reading through yet more forced humor, and offered five minutes of fun with Flappy Board, the social reader company’s “first foray into video games”.
There’s are a tonne of Flappy Bird clones out there, but this one is actually pretty tricky if you play from a desktop as I did.
Flap.
— Flipboard (@Flipboard) April 1, 2014
Flappy-Flap!
— Flipboard (@Flipboard) April 1, 2014
Flap-Flap Flap-Flap FlapFlapFlap!
— Flipboard (@Flipboard) April 1, 2014
Opera — Cats By Opera
Browser-maker Opera wants to make sure your cat has a better browser to suit its needs.
LinkedIn CYMK
Staying with the feline theme, LinkedIn has announced CYMK – Cats You May Know. “Cats You May Know was designed to give pawed professionals an opportunity to brand themselves, share their unique skills, and network with both humans and other relevant cats in their breed.” After all, you can only scale so far by targeting humans.
Orbotix Selfiebot
A video that combines drones with selfies feels a bit too ‘trying hard to be on-trend’, but this video is at least nicely done, and we can almost imagine this actually being a real thing in a few years time. This is from Orbotix, the company behind Sphero.
This is an ongoing list that we’ll add to as we go. Feel free to get in touch if you come across something that isn’t on the list and is worthy of being spotlighted.
Don’t miss: All of Google’s jokes for April Fools’ Day 2014
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