April Fool’s

By Brad

Diving into this day of pranks—and having fun with print media’s current woes—British newspaper The Guardian announced to its readers that it was abandoning print in favor of reporting news via social networking fad Twitter. From the paper’s site:

Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication.

The move, described as “epochal” by media commentators, will see all Guardian content tailored to fit the format of Twitter’s brief text messages, known as “tweets”, which are limited to 140 characters each. Boosted by the involvement of celebrity “twitterers”, such as Madonna, Britney Spears and Stephen Fry, Twitter’s profile has surged in recent months, attracting more than 5m users who send, read and reply to tweets via the web or their mobile phones.

Here’s a report from the paper’s archive, in tweet mode:

OMG first successful transatlantic air flight wow, pretty cool! Boring day otherwise *sigh*