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Easter Eggs

Want to get people talking about your product? One way to get people talking is to include "Easter eggs" in your product. An Easter egg is a hidden feature that surprises and delights, but isn't necessarily useful or consistent with the core purpose of the product.

When someone discovers an Easter egg, they are likely to spread word about it to their friends. "Hey, look what I found."

An Easter egg that my friend Sonia recently passed along is in Google Maps:
  1. Go to google.com.
  2. Click 'Maps'.
  3. Click 'Get Directions'.
  4. Enter 'New York, New York' to 'Paris, France'.
  5. Read line #23.
Sometimes developers include Easter eggs as a private joke, unbeknownst to you or your product manager. In other cases, Easter eggs are a deliberate means of generating word of mouth.

Comments

AlanAJ said…
You'll note that the journey takes "about" 29 days 7 hours. Just swimming the Atlantic in that time, non-stop, gives you an average speed of 5 miles an hour.

By the way, Google Maps UK has this "Easter Egg" at step 15. The Brits are advised to take a slightly longer (47 miles), slightly simpler (?) route.
Fri Apr 13, 03:18:00 AM 2007
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