Guardian celebrates Twitter milestone with 1 million ‘selfies’, potentially

By Simon Hilliard on Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Guardian has recently hit a laudable milestone, with the paper’s main handle (@guardian) surpassing one million followers.

As The Wall points out, that’s nothing to be scoffed at. While it may lag behind some of its US counterparts, the milestone puts the paper way ahead of competitors The Telegraph (225,000 followers), FT (789,000), Indy (247,000) Mail (295,000) and The Times (77,000).

To celebrate, the paper’s asking for readers and follows to take part in a mass-phototaking-extravaganza type stunt. Readers are encouraged to post pictures of where they’re reading

the G on Twitter with the hashtag #1msides (that’s 1 million sides to a story). There’s even the option to take “a #selfie if you're that way inclined”. But hopefully, you’re not.

It’s a simple idea, and as you’ll see form the link above a ton of people are keen to take part. The Guardian’s also using its considerable social media noggin to create other content to support the effort, including syndicating photos on the Guardian Witness site, a map-mashup of the selected photos, and this rather nice Vine video showing front pages from its beginning as The Manchester Guardian to the modern day.