YouTube Hacked Over Tay Zonday?

As a fan of Tay Zonday and the Chocolate Rain madness, I was excited to see a post in my RSS reader that Thursday was being christened “Tay Zonday Day” on YouTube, with the front page getting taken over by all Zonday, all day. I clicked to the YouTube Blog post, but there was nothing there but a blank screen, and no homepage takeover either.

I’ve been piecing together the news, and it looks like YouTube was hacked. According to Mashable, the fellas at the 4chan /b/ forum are claiming responsibility, and the front page at YouTube.com was covered in Chocolate Rain parodies and tributes, as can be seen here. They not only hacked the front page, but they posted about it to the YouTube blog, giving it an air of legitimacy and a special place in the Google cache.

The post, no longer available on the YouTube blog:

Tay Zonday Day

What’s up with “chocolate rain”?

Many of you have been following the rapid rise and response videos surrounding a music video from a unique talent. To give proper credit to the millions who have bonded with Tay Zonday and his song “Chocolate Rain,” we’ve gathered the 12 responses with the best rating and comments and are displaying them on our home page — but just for a day.

To those of you who haven’t already gotten caught in the rain, we hope it inspires you to add your response. (And let us know if you enjoy features or home page “takeovers” like this!)

Best,
The YouTube Team

No statement from YouTube on what happened.

Meanwhile, Tay has a new video, possibly referring to the recent spurt in internet fame he’s enjoyed:

And then there’s this really strange one somebody pointed out to me, where he sings about TurboTax?

July 30th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | YouTube, Services, General | 2 comments