Marketplace Scratch Pad

April Fool’s confusion

Scott Jagow Apr 1, 2009

It’s getting harder to fool on April 1st because the ridiculous doesn’t seem as ridiculous anymore, not since an insurance company took the planet hostage. One of my favorite gags of the day came from the Guardian Newspaper. The British paper announced that after 188 years, it would become the first newspaper to be published exclusively via Twitter.

From the story:

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper’s archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include “1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!”; “OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more”; and “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”

As preposterous as it sounds, it doesn’t sound that preposterous. Nothing does. In fact, this morning, Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman had a great story about new Twitter applications, and he tweeted the story as it was being broadcast!

The new Twitter apps are real, even though they sound like April Fool’s material — plants tweeting people when they need water, counting your calories via Twitter, Twitter home security. You can read or listen to the story here.

However, I can’t seem to corroborate Mitchell’s story from Marketplace PM today

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