ESPN.com gets glittery, unicorn makeover

Screengrab from ESPN.comThis is the best story we have seen in weeks.  Apparently the ESPN site has an Easter Egg for old school gamers.  When visiting the site in Internet Explorer and entering the Konami code, one of the most famous cheat codes in gaming, the site gets an aesthetic makeover suited to an 8-year-old girl.

The makeover seems to come from cornify.com, and while the unicorns and pink text might be deemed by some to be a welcome addition, one thread posting in the article about this trick notes that there is a job opening for web designer for ESPN on Disney’s recruiting site.

See the full page screenshot: Screengrab on ESPN.com
Hopefully the full story, and the social media/viral marketing implications, will come out in short time.  In the meantime, I’m having me some sparkling unicorns with rainbows and NASCAR.  (Note: the Konami code is Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Enter).

Update: The Easter Egg is no longer working.  However, ESPN has broken through as one of the trending topics on Twitter today, so it definitely generated some buzz.  Apparently, the original code for the Konami code + Unicorns was written by this guy, whose site still shows the effects.  One of ESPN’s web developers tweeted about removing the code shortly after the Lab first noticed it.