Of course, "Frank's Marriage Proposal In Central Park" turned out to be just another YouTube hoax, created to promote the work of Thinkmodo, a NY agency founded by Michael Krivicka and James Percelay, specializing in viral, it prefers the term social, videos and campaigns.

Percelay told Mashable, who were punked by the project, that a good hoax is hard, but a commercially viable fake is the real challenge.

"Since viral videos are both art and science, we wanted to merge both elements to introduce predictability to the videos' success," Percelay told Mashable. "As part of our 'study' we staged an elaborate marriage proposal in Central Park and fused tech and romance to see how well each would be received if merged."

Half a million views later, the answer seems to be pretty well received. A better question might be how users, and potential clients, will react  to the news that Thinkmodo played them for fools in order to perfect their viral technique.

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper