An April 1st Post

April Fools' Retrospective

Every year around this time, the marketing department gets together to plan a strategy for April Fools—we say “strategy” because we take it seriously. And every year, some questionable ideas inevitably arise (someone invariably brings up illogical data center locations and has to be shot down). Patrick’s wife has been going on about a Cloud-Enabled Pizza Delivery joke (thanks to Lebron James’s pizza exploits at “Blaze Pizza”—nice name by the way). We’ve kindly had to let her down as well.

But this year, obviously, is different. And, given that there’s already more than enough confusion going on in the news when it comes to COVID-19, we all agreed that it was not the best time to add any more by making you wonder, “Did they really replace their Fireball service with cats?” No, this isn’t the time for April Fools posts and shenanigans, but that doesn’t mean you, our faithful blog readers, can’t have a little fun at our expense.

We’re completely focused on ensuring that our services deliver for you all, and part of that effort involves keeping up morale across our team and among you, our community.

We hope you and yours are doing well, and in lieu of spending a lot of time creating something new to help folks chuckle, we wanted to share some of our April Fools posts from years past—which we hope will help you crack a smile in case you missed them.

Andy Singing

One of the first things Andy did when he joined Backblaze was come up with an excuse to put on his Blues Brothers outfit and hum a few bars. He didn’t think this video was still online; we want to assure him that it is.

Yev Singing

Following in Andy’s tradition, I sometimes like to vocalize, though, unless you follow Critical Role (a live streamed DnD campaign), the context of my song will likely be lost upon you. But how could I promote Andy’s singing without subjecting you to my own?

Introducing Catblaze Cloud Backup

Cat storage. It writes itself. People have a ton of cat photos and videos, and they need a purpose-built repository for their computer’s curated cat content.

Introducing Furball: Rapid Content Delivery

Sure, cat data storage writes itself, but how do you migrate cat storage? What if you have too many feline photos on your computer and need to upload them quickly? Why not send us a Furball to expedite that cloud storage!

Bling 2 Cloud Storage

Sometimes people think our service is too inexpensive. We welcome them to try Bling 2 Cloud Storage. It’s the same thing as Backblaze B2, but brings the pricing in line with our competition at four times our usual price—perfection!

Storage Pods Crushed by Eagle Prime

What do you do with decommissioned, broken Storage Pods? Have a giant robot crush them of course.

DNA Storage with Backblaze Labs

We’re always on the lookout for new ways to store data efficiently. And we don’t mind repurposing our typically heads-down team at Backblaze Labs to do it. Blood drive anyone?

The REAL Story Behind Our Affordability

People have always been curious about how we can be so affordable. Well, here’s the real story.

Horse in the Office

One of our founders decided to scare people on the night time security camera alert email list with this little maneuver.

Remember Flappy Bird?

We built our own little version but sadly the fad passed before we could get it through QA and onto the app store.

We hope you enjoyed that trip down memory lane with us. Please take care of yourselves and each other!

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About Yev

Yev Pusin is the senior director of Marketing and sometimes Marketing chief of staff at Backblaze, which he joined in 2011. Yev has a degree in business and communications from the University of Iowa, where he developed an alliteration affinity. Yev enjoys writing in an amusing way about the "why" of things and how decisions are made, so that readers can learn and be entertained all at once. Follow Yev on: Twitter: @YevP | LinkedIn: Yev Pusin