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The theme was “Tear Down This Wall” at Facebook’s Seattle Hackathon last week.

The theme of Facebook’s Seattle hackathon last week, “Tear Down This Wall,” got the attention of people inside Smartsheet, the cloud-based collaboration tool with headquarters in nearby Bellevue, Wash.

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Smartsheet employees created a stand-up wall with candy inside, delivering it to Facebook Seattle.

And that’s when they decided to have some fun.

The Facebook hackathon encouraged employees to come up with hacks to improve internal collaboration and communication. But the irony, in Smartsheet’s view, is that Facebook and other companies have put up their own walls to the outside world by preventing companies from using unapproved, third-party software-as-a-service tools.

“A good first wall to tear down is the one blocking innovation from the outside world,” says Smartsheet co-founder Brent Frei, noting that “you can imagine how tempting it was for us to tease them metaphorically with with such a rich opening as ‘Tear down this Wall.’ ”

So a couple of Smartsheet employees decided to pull a prank — building a piñata wall and delivering it surreptitiously to Facebook’s Seattle headquarters, with the message, “Hey Facebook, Tear Down This Wall!!”

It came complete with hard hats and hammers to let the Facebook employees tear down the wall to get the candy inside.

No word yet from Facebook in response to GeekWire’s inquiry, but we can only imagine that the wall was quickly taken away.

Notes Frei, “Hopefully they see it in the fun spirit it was intended, and not as a reason to go to DEFCON 4 in reviewing their facilities security procedures.”

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The wall after it was delivered to Facebook Seattle.
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