hoax Articles

A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools’ Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.
The British philologist Robert Nares (1753–1829) says that the word hoax was coined in the late 18th century as a contraction of the verb hocus, which means “to cheat”, “to impose upon” or ...

Exclusive Interview With The Creators of The Shaving Helmet Hoax Video

I've been talking about the now-famous head-shaving helmet video for a few weeks now. First I featured it in one of my weekly round-ups of the latest and greatest viral success stories. A few days later, CNN revealed the video as a hoax and spoke ...

A Tale of Two Viral Hoax Videos Done Right

Hoax videos are pretty trendy right now. You probably heard about the Jerusalem UFO videos, which many have labeled as the work of well-organized pranksters. Or maybe you heard about the Central Park iPhone marriage proposal that ultimately turned out to be staged. Either way, ...

Surprise, Surprise: YouTube Million Dollar Gift Was All A Hoax

You should probably sit down for this. Get composed, and ready yourself for really unexpected, bad news: The kid that asked for a million dollars on YouTube and then got it? Yeah, total hoax, exactly like I said it was. After staging a check-awarding ceremony ...

How To Make Money On YouTube: Just Ask for It?

There's a story catching fire this week and I bet you've heard about it.  A kid goes on YouTube a month ago, asking rich people to give him a million dollars, and a few short weeks later he claims to have found the generous donor. ...

Can Videos That Suck, Work As A YouTube Marketing Strategy?

Can you be commercially successful over time by regularly producing videos that suck, either intentionally or otherwise? Well, Fred and Sharon Spencer of "Who Needs a Movie?" fame proved that it can at least get you to be YouTube, B-List caliber celebrities. Learn about their ...

Unicorn Video Is A Hoax, and A Genius Piece of Viral Marketing

Unicorns aren't real.  Everyone knows that… except the people who want to believe they're real.  Like most mythical creatures—such as the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot—unicorns have a pretty strong appeal to some people.  So tapping into that popularity is a fine way to stage ...

Online Video Marketing Basics: Part 4 - Choosing The Right Video Production Equipment

Welcome to Part 4 of our ongoing Online Video Marketing Basics series.  It's intended to be a help—a sort of guide, if you will—for individuals and businesses just getting started with online video.  We've already covered Why You Should Get Involved with online video, Choosing ...

Google Users Are More Loyal and More Active... Probably

New data from ComScore shows that Google users run more searches than Yahoo and Microsoft users… combined.  According to the research, Google users conduct an average of 54.5 searches.  Yahoo users perform 24.5 searches and Microsoft users run 26.9 queries. More interesting than that, though, ...

Distribution Deals Help Google Increase TV Ad Inventory

As of September Google has been selling time through Google TV Adwords for NBC advertising inventory. The announcement was made on September 24th on the Google offline ads blog. Again they've made another deal, this time with Bloomberg TV. Starting November 6th Google started allowing ...