Here is the message we sent this morning to 19 million of our 34 million users:
1. Email subject line said: Barack Obama confirmed you as a cousin on We’re Related
The body of the email said:
2. Once they click on the link above, they get sent to the following landing page:
3. Once they click on anything on the page, they discover that they have been fooled! Here is the page they see:
Fun Facts About the April Fool’s Joke:
· We’re Related on Facebook received 3,000,000 unique visits today, largely as a result of the April Fool’s joke
· This traffic is 5x higher than traffic for this same period on the application’s previous best day
· The email mimics the typical relative confirmation emails sent by FamilyLink.com, Inc. to its We’re Related Customers
· We’re Related on Facebook has an audience of 34 million people who have defined more than 150 million family relationships using the application
· We’re Related is the #3 most popular application on Facebook and the #1 social application for families
· The email validates the interest in people discovering new family relationships (especially notable ones!)
· Reactions have been extremely positive (94%), but have ranged from warnings about fraud/viruses to sheer delight, with hundreds of thousands of people falling for the joke
