April Fool’s Day and Twitter were made for each other, don’t you think? Sharing-oriented messages with a shortened URL courtesy of bit.ly or some other tool? It’s the perfect combination of trust, expectation of useful content, and an obscured link. The perfect storm.
That was my thinking at least. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to think of a good hook. This is what I unfurled today:
Ben & Jerry’s honour Ted Nugent with new flavour: Mango Wango Tango – http://bit.ly/aJu7VJ – #rockstar #icecream
Clever, I thought… though obviously a dated reference that would limit its appeal to an older demographic.
Not surprisingly, there were not great results. Even by using 5 different Twitter accounts that I own or manage, this effort only yielded 4 hits. Disappointing to say the least.
Then, based on a completely legitimate list I saw another person post, the idea hit me:
Top Ten Great April Fool’s Day Hoaxes – http://bit.ly/aJu7VJ – #aprilfool #funny #top10 #topten
Bingo! Thirty hits in just a few minutes.
While it lacked the creativeness of my first attempt — an idea which was plausibly true, the fact that this tweet was a hoax in itself was… tremendously satisfying. I was quite tickled. Kind of like these laughing rats, being tickled by a research scientist:
See you next year.
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