We developed a social application that allowed Renren users to prank their friends. The application was announced in a Renren ad, allowing users to choose one of six possible tricks that disrupted a friend’s Renren profile with an interactive M&M’s experience.

Red and Yellow literally burst through the tricked user’s profile page or became the tricked user’s profile photo. The trickster might post a prank message as a status update. Or it might feature Red or Yellow 'shooting' the page using an M&M’s chocolate blaster.

News of the trick also was posted automatically to the user’s status updates so that all friends could share in the fun. In a final twist, randomly selected pranksters found themselves tricked as well. Red and Yellow became part of the fabric of Renren users’ friendships.

The opportunity to play an April Fool’s joke with Red and Yellow proved irresistible — in just two weeks, some 3.7 million people participated in the campaign, with 2.6 million Renren users playing tricks on friends. Participation was four times what was expected, based on Renren’s average.

M&M’s effort reached 90% of Renrenusers, seven times more than the network’s average campaign. A search on Baidu (China’s top search engine) showed people chatting and posting news about the campaign on 320,000 different websites, blogs or news sites. Red and Yellow — and M&M’s — were the kings of April Fool’s Day!