16 year old teen breaks down Vine on its debut on Android with a Meme

16 year old web developer Will Smidlein succeeded in bypassing the 6 Sec upload limit set by Vine and managed to upload a 3 and half minute Rick Astley's immortal "Never Gonna Give You Up".  The post was done at the same time as Vine's debut on Android causing a serious heartburn among the Twitter's engineers.  Even as the Vine went viral, Twitter’s engineers started to have troubles with the video that “broke” Vine. An engineer from the micro-blogging website sent a direct message to Smidlien, requesting him to take the video down  

Before reading the article, I want you to understand the two words used in the post.  Many of you would probably know them or heard them somewhere but for not so intelligent among us, here goes.

Meme : Wiki lists Meme as "A meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."  In the tech world it means a article, video or a stub which goes viral within all forms of internet.

Rickrolling : Rickrolling is an Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a bait and switch; a person provides a hyperlink which is seemingly relevant to the topic at hand, but actually leads to Astley's video.  So if you are on serious topic and your friend or colleague sends you a inconspicuous link, which you think is related to topic, but leads to the song; you are rickrolled.

Hope you have understood the two terms.  Now back to the topic.  How did 16 year old Smidlein manage to penetrate the busty servers of Twitter and upload a 3 and 1/2 song as against the 6 sec limit.  Well, Smidlein is a Android developer and  just as Vine hit Android, he decompiled the application. He managed to recreate portions of the service’s API that lets users create posts, add titles and attach thumbnail images. Smidlein then downloaded the Rick Astley video and posted it to the app’s servers, creating a never-ending, looped RickRoll. 

What he assumed was a harmless prank, turned into a nightmare for the Twitter engineers.  As a last resort, they had to approach Smidlein to remove the post as it went viral over the webworld.

Smidlein's constant tweets on the issue absolve him of any wrongdoing but the fact remains that this meme will be quite famous for a while. 

Vijay Prabhu