Bin Laden's Death and Twitter Record

Even before President Barack Obama officially told the country and the world that the leader of the terrorists, Osama bin Laden, was killed, Facebook and Twitter began to actively cover this news.

As soon as late on Sunday evening, the first news appeared that the mastermind of the terrorist act of September 11 was killed, people in the United States and the whole world rushed to scribble messages on social networks.
After 11 pm, the news feeds were filled with comments about bin Laden's death. Twitter was filled with information and links.
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The news of the death of al-Qaeda leader has a bombshell effect on Twitter.

According to the company, on Sunday night, the site posted the most tweets per second than ever. From 10:45 pm to 2:20 am there were an average of 3,000 tweets per second. At 11 o'clock in the evening - 5106 tweets per second, and at 11:45 pm, when Obama finished his speech, there were 5008 tweets per second.

So that you have something to compare this data with:
- game for the title of champion of the National Football League - a 20-minute period, over 3000 tweets per second;
- another popular sporting event - 4064 tweets per second.

This is another example of the fact that during significant events, people turn social networks into real media. Ironically, there was no connection at all to bin Laden’s asylum, which had been monitored by US intelligence officials for several months.

Had a destructive earthquake or tsunami or the liquidation of the terrorist leader, people turn to Facebook and Twitter, said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at the Yankee Group.

“Facebook and Twitter quickly became the standard for communications,” said Kerravala, adding that he learned about bin Laden's death on Sunday night. “It's like a communication avalanche. Once it starts, it will not stop. „

Kerravala immediately added an online comment about the news, and he was not alone.

• As soon as the news spread online, people began to organize holiday flash mobs - in New York in Times Square, in front of the White House in Washington, in parks and other public places in other cities.

• At the Phillies-Metz match in Philadelphia, they did not announce the death of the terrorist, but the fans began chanting “USA! USA! ”, As soon as they found out about the news using smartphones.

• Keith Urban, Human Resources Manager of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, may have been the source of the information. On Sunday evening, he tweeted, “You can authoritatively declare that they killed bin Laden. Nishtyak. True, he quickly added : “I don’t know if this is true, but let's pray that this will be so”

• At the same time, as the news leaked, Pakistani IT consultant Sohaib Atar tweeted about the raid on Bin Laden’s mansion, not understanding its meaning. “The helicopter hovered over Abbottabad at one in the morning (a rare case),” he wrote. “After the explosion, there was silence, my friend heard an explosion for 6 km ... then the helicopter flew away."

• “Bin Laden Is Dead” pages started appearing on Facebook

• at 12:25 pm on Monday, 8 out of 10 hot topics on Twitter contained information about the death of a terrorist.

• Google Earth revealed the place where bin Laden was found.

“Our dependence on social networks is linked to our growing dependence on mobile devices,” said Brad Shimin, analyst at Current Analysis. “At one time, they only aroused curiosity, but now they are so closely intertwined with our life that it is difficult to imagine a world without social networks.”

Shimin said he first learned about bin Laden's death from Twitter, and not through television.

“After the first time I came across this post, I searched the hashtag to make sure that the news was being discussed by a large number of people and that it was from a reputable source.
It was the BBC News agency, ”he added. “After that, I realized that I could trust what I read, and that the news was objective and presented from different points of view. I think this way of receiving news is much more reliable than watching a single channel. ”