Every year April Fools day seems to get more painful. As the number of media outlets increases through growing numbers of TV stations, radio stations and websites, not to mention personal blogs and Twitter accounts the number of April Fool jokes we’re exposed to increases. I certainly felt a bit over-exposed to poor quality April Fools yesterday.

Every company out there wants to get their joke press release to appear rehashed as a ‘news’ story in the papers. The problem for them is that with so many companies out there trying the same thing, most are going to fail. Journalists can spot an April Fool press release at fifty paces and won’t touch it. Let’s face it, journalists are good at writing their own April Fools (like this one from The Guardian yesterday) and one per media outlet per year is more than enough.

DIY lies

The days of relying on the press are over though. Companies large and small can get their April Fools out there via their own website or blog. If it’s particularly convincing or funny it may well get spread around the world without you having to do as much as lift a finger.

One such company to enter into the April Fools spirit was Topify. Topify is a service for users of Twitter who want more detailed information about the people who follow them. Normally Twitter will send you a short and sweet email when someone follows you, giving a link to view their profile. For most people that’s enough, but some would power users prefer that notification email to provide more information about the new person following them so they can decide whether to follow back or not. Topify fills that niche.

On the 31st of March, a post went up on the Topify blog called ‘Fighting For Topify‘. “This is a bad day for Topify.”, it began. “We have just been notified that our service is being sued for copyright infringement by a major company. I am not sure we are allowed to mention it but I’ll take the chances.

“Fedex claims they have a registered patent for delivering faster and better email notifications and they claim we have infringed it.”

The post asked readers to spread the news online via their own blogs and Twitter accounts and that’s what they did. I saw a link to the post retweeted by several influential Twitter users through the day. I was skeptical but even I retweeted it (with a “probably an April Fool” disclaimer).

Readers’ comments on the blog post pledged their support for the underdog Topify against the might of Fedex. “This is ridiculous if it really turns out to be FedEx – from now on I will only use UPS” said one. “OMFG! this is utter bullshit. y’all rock and deserve to continue delivering something FedEx never would… social media tools. c’mon.” raged another. Some commenters spotted the Fool but others were clearly outraged. Apparently a lawyer even got in touch offering to take up their case!

Eventually Topify came clean about it being a joke but a simple blog post had given them tons of free publicity. All the chat on Twitter got the name of a little-known service spread far and wide and the biggest tech blog in the world, Techcrunch, even included them in a roundup of April Fools.

So, what did they do right? By tapping into people’s desire to back the little guy against ridiculous demands from the big boys (think about the public support for The Pirate Bay against the might of the entertainment industry for example) they managed to trick people into spreading their name far and wide.

Careful planning

Ouriel Ohayon, one of the founders of Topify, has written an excellent post on his personal blog detailing the planning that went into making sure the April Fool got noticed. They even had small teams of Twitterers spreading the news at different times of day so that it got noticed around the world. There was even a good reason behind launching the April Fool a day early – they just wanted to beat the rush of fake stories.

You can’t do something like this any day. April the 1st is the only day the public will forgive you for lying so blatantly to them. So, if you want to do something like this you’ve got a long wait ahead. You might as well get planning though – as Topify have shown, get your lie right and you’ll reap the rewards.