April Fools’ Day is a day celebrated in many countries on April 1.
The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members,enemies, and neighbors, or sending them on a fool’s errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible.
Here in England the jokes only last until noon. When I was at school me and my friend Amy B tried to play a prank on our class. We lived in the small street and planned the joke the night before down to the small details. The only problem was the class didn’t find it funny and it went horribly wrong – My best friend saw it that I no longer trusted her because I told Amy before I told her.
I don’t mind playing April Fools’ jokes if I know that they will either A) someone else is planning it and I’m just playing along with it or B) I know it will succeed and seriously get someone,
This year the Guardian newspaper played a prank on it’s readers. The article was published on their website by Rio Palof this morning.
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.
As a Twitter-only publication, the Guardian will be able to harness the unprecedented newsgathering power of the service, demonstrated recently when a passenger on a plane that crashed outside Denver was able to send real-time updates on the story as it developed, as did those witnessing an emergency landing on New York’s Hudson River. It has also radically democratised news publishing, enabling anyone with an internet connection to tell the world when they are feeling sad, or thinking about having a cup of tea.
