16 year-old developer Will Smidlein - now enjoying at least fifteen minutes of Internet fame - managed to upload the entire three minutes, thirty seconds of Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up. The 80s hit is now famed for 'Rickrolling', where Internet users replace supposedly genuine links with ones to the Astley music video in order to troll or trick others.
Smidlein achieved the feat the same day Twitter released a dedicated Vine Android app. The full-length video was quickly retweeted by others and covered by various tech sites. The teenager responsible was soon contacted directly by a Twitter engineer, who asked him to remove the video. Although the original post remains, the attached video has been removed.
Smidlein has promised to release a breakdown of how he managed the workaround once the new app has been successfully updated. The youngster - who says, in an interview with The Verge, that he is due to start an internship in online 'article saving' service Pocket - has also apologised to the Twitter engineers who have now been forced to rework the code and deal with his discovery.
I truly feel awful for the engineers whose day I ruined with my stupid messing around.
— Will Smidlein (@ws) June 3, 2013
Sorry, Twitter/Vine engineers. I tried to keep it quiet, but the internet never forgets.
— Will Smidlein (@ws) June 3, 2013
This is not the first time Twitter's strict limitations have been overcome, with many dedicated applications and mobile services dedicated to allowing tweeters to bypass the standard 140 character limit, if often only through the applications themselves.
